Here’s a new video by Richard Reising.
What are we communicating on a Sunday morning–let alone a Tuesday afternoon? Why should your church get a free pass from healthy critical analysis?
Drew Downs
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A prayer for General Convention
As General Convention (the tri-ennial convention of the Episcopal Church) begins this morning, I thought it appropriate to lift up the people involved.
God of Hope and Wonder,
Your love for us knows no bounds. You are with us when we fall and when we are lifted up. You give us grace when we deserve it and when we don’t.
We pray today for your Church, its people, and its mission; remembering especially those participating in General Convention in Anaheim, California: Bishops and Deputies, support staffs, the youth presence, and exhibitors.
We pray for this and every nation of the world, granting wisdom and compassion to their leaders.
We pray for the welfare of the world; every person, animal, plant, or organism that dwells within it.
We pray for those who suffer or are in any trouble. Be with them. Give them voice and comfort and give us the eyes to see them and ears to hear them.
A Song of Pilgrimage*
Ecclesiasticus 51:13-16, 20b-22
Before I ventured forth,
even while I was very young,
I sought wisdom openly in my prayer.
In the forecourts of the temple I asked for her,
and I will seek her to the end.
From first blossom to early fruit,
she has been the delight of my heart.
My foot has kept firmly to the true path,
diligently from my youth have I pursued her;
I inclined my ear a little and received her;
I found for myself much wisdom and became adept in her.
To the one who give me wisdom will I give glory,
for I have resolved to live according to her way.
From the beginning I gained courage from her,
therefore I will not be forsaken.
In my inmost being I have been stirred to seek her,
therefore have I gained a good possession.
As my reward the Almighty has given me the gift of language,
and with it will I offer praise to God.Amen.
*from Enriching Our Worship 1
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Varying expressions of church
One of the most amazing things to me is the varying expressions of church that there are already. We allow in our minds the thought that Catholics and Baptists can both be worshiping on Sunday mornings. This doesn’t hurt our brains.
But for some reasons, the modernists, the skeptics, and the trolls among us cannot get past the different strands and understandings of today’s Christians that are actually trying to embody the beliefs they already hold, which may or may not be the ones they inherited.
It is in this spirit that I will send you to a couple of other places to look at some interesting descriptions of the different strands of emergence. First, I want to thank Shawn Anthony, whose blog compares these two options here. It is worth looking at his intro first, since he did the work, so should get the props of your web visit.
Next, visit Scot McKnight’s depiction of the Five Streams, which can be found here. His understanding of the different groupings is pretty much in line with most of what I have read and makes a lot of direct sense. I like it, though I find myself fitting neatly into all of them, which I don’t think is the point…
After you have visited McKnight’s article, check this one out at Gathering in Light. This one, I think, is a more accurate and useful description, if not a bit more academic.
Now, I recognize that both of these lists are a bit old, and I only just discovered them, but I think they are excellent. I am most interested in the latter “Four Models of Emerging Churches” as it breaks up the conversation into which theologians most directly affect them. If we can get past the intellectualism of this suggestion, it is actually much more practical, since the means of understanding a person can best be done by examining his or her influences. For instance, if one simply knows that I was an English Major, it gives a certain useful definition to the way I may be seen. But, if you ask me what literature most influenced me, WWI poetry and absurdest drama, you can begin to see the areas I would most likely be interested in (existentialism, personal transformation, social, political, and cultural upheaval) and what my preferred literary criticism might be (reader response and deconstructionism). These specific examples may be difficult for a non-English major to understand, but if you and I were to have a conversation about this, you could learn a whole lot more about me than simply defining me using typical options (liberal, progressive, traditional, orthodox, whatever).
Further, if you wanted to learn more about what I think, one could actually read some of the works that I find most impressive, such as the poetry of Wilfed Owen or David Jones and the plays of Samuel Beckett or Harold Pinter. Going to these sources can be much more descriptive.
This can also be a useful shortcut in understanding what these different theological concerns represent when we are able to engage these theologies. Clearly, based on what I’ve just shared, I am most attracted to the first model, which the writer describes as the deconstructionist model. It is where my heart is and where my study takes me. But I now have the means of examining three other streams through their theological forebears and current practitioners.
As we continue to examine ourselves and where we fall into this Great Emergence, I for one will find this tool handy. I could be persuaded to explore another model if that’s where the Spirit takes me.
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Chicken, Egg, or None of the above?
The often-missed lesson of the chicken egg argument is that it is virtually never the presenting issue.
Let me lay out the question so that we can see the problem:
Which came first:
the chicken
or
the egg?
At first blush, we can see in the question a simple matter of creation. In fact, it seems to get at the root of how we see the creation of everything: is it realized in a full form, or does it grow from a starting place?The question then becomes the source of a creepy ideo-philosophical discussion about evolution, because we know better than to think either option fully encompasses the discussion. Obviously, before their was chicken or egg their was a proto-chicken that would evolve into the chicken we know today. This argument has played out in the classroom as children are held hostage in a so-called “war” between creationists and evolutionists. But that further muddies the water away from the original conundrum.
The question of eminence: who gets first crack at the world: seems ridiculously shallow in any context. Isn’t this reminiscent of the disciples in Mark 9:34, arguing over who is the greatest? Or of the audacious request of the Zebedee brothers a chapter later: “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory”? And to push this analogy even further, do these images not represent an utter ignorance of Jesus’ ministry as well as a rejection of Jesus’ attempts to prepare the disciples for his death?
So what is the question of the chicken and egg really about? I might make this suggestion. Isn’t there a greater question about how these two elements of life served creation in its past, its present, and its future? What place does the egg have in the world and how does that compare with the place of the chicken? Can we not eat both of them? Can we not eat the egg as the product of the chicken? Can we not recognize the efficiency of the production process here?
This makes me think of a similar cliche: “it’s like apples and oranges”. Taken in this light, are they not both fruit? Are they not both edible and useful? And are they not better for us than a Whopper?
Perhaps it is in our nature to spend time in contemplation about the universe and its creation and order. Perhaps it is even useful (in some ways) to argue over the shape and purpose of all that is. But isn’t it of greater use to think about the ministry itself? Isn’t it far greater to speculate on the wonder of creation, rather than seek to define it? Isn’t that the wrong question?
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Just dance
You have to admit it: Ellen DeGeneres is the epitome of honesty.
Comedian, yes. Talk show host, yes. And yet, she’s honest. There is no character, nothing objectionable, and absolutely nothing fake.
If you haven’t seen her commencement speech, you need to. It’s about 10 and a half minutes and it’s great. You can watch it below:
What strikes me is that Ellen has been kicked to the curb despite her obvious talent, simply because some people were/are afraid. So their tactic is to intimidate and try to make her afraid.
It is my hope that not only those graduates in the audience at Tulane University, but students everywhere get a chance to learn how to stand up from her. That she saw, in herself, the need to be prophetic, honest, and authentic. She had to claim who she was, not as clothing or as a fad that can give definition to her identity, but to portray herself as she sees herself. What 22 year-old doesn’t need to hear that? And what 62 year-old doesn’t need to hear that, either? What church doesn’t need to hear that?
Ellen loves to dance–and she gets a chance to do it everyday on her show. What do you love to do?
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Seminary Truths 103
If you are following my ongoing discussion of seminary (previous posts here and here), you might want to check out these other places, including this one from Tribal Church and a particularly good conversation at Sarx (as directed from the other link).
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Seminary Truths 102
I loved seminary. I continue to believe in it. I would be completely unprepared for the priesthood had I not done seminary. In fact, I might be the poster child for pre-seminary idiocy and indifference to the workings of the church. Seminary is the training ground, afterall, for the future leaders of the church. Seminary changed my life.
My own experience, and the experience others tend to discuss, is what isn’t covered in seminary. So often, even in seminary, I would hear people say derisively “we should’ve learned that in seminary” (insert random insignificant subject). The belief being that seminary is not supposed to raise up church leaders and priests/clerics, but church middle-managers that are adept at juggling church finances and soothing the hurt egos of parishioners. The subtext of these discussions is that the role of the priest in a local congregation (which therefore must define the roll of the priesthood within the church at large) is as an office manager that spends his Sundays blessing crackers and his afternoons visiting nursing homes and hospitals. If this is the true corporate identity of the priest, then count me out. Get the bishop to take the ordination back with a “psych!”. In that case, I don’t want it!
But it isn’t. What we learn in seminary isn’t supposed to be about being a better middle manager, but being a disciple of Jesus, a worker for the Kingdom of God, and a vessel for the Holy Spirit to lead the church. We read scripture, we wax theologically, we laugh at our ancestors and we get our hearts broken in internships–that’s seminary.
What I described in the previous post was a dim view of the influence of politics–not in the issue sense, but the bureaucratic one. The influence of who gets to say what when and who is allowed to have an opinion. You know, typical hierarchical BS. Except that I do think there is something else that is interesting about what seminaries are supposed to be: an insurance policy. Yes, a bureaucratic insurance policy, but a useful one.
Though some may feel stifled by seminary, it is an institutional insurance that its leadership will be exposed to new and different thinking. In my experience, the people that had a hard time with seminary fell into two camps: either they lost their sense of call or they didn’t want to be exposed to new ideas. In my mind, I wonder if the Tony Jones’ friend is representative of the former. But just as often, it is the latter. I had several classmates that hid behind an image of something like “liberal intolerance” that was more like “the stupid professor is making me read books that say things that offend me” or “here is my list of assigned reading that my fringe denomination condones as orthodox”. For these students, reading any Biblical scholarship that didn’t automatically agree with their preferred dogma was inherently heretical. In other words, they were afraid that their faith may not hold all of the answers. Shocking!
For this latter component, seminary serves as the opportunity to discern the openness the postulant for ordination may be toward learning new things and being exposed to different ways of thinking. This is an obvious and necessary safety net.
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Seminary Truths 101
I am currently reading Tony Jones’ The New Christians. It is as close as any book has come to describing the work of the emergent church in the current moment. It is a great book.
However, I did get to a section that I found deeply troubling. Throughout the book, Tony inserts Dispatches—a short description of a real person with real circumstances. These are people he has interviewed and written up a descriptor for them. These dispatches are intended to illustrate the point of the chapter. The chapter on theology ends with what he calls “Dispatch from Seminary: Legalisms of the Left”. I don’t intend to give an in depth description of this dispatch, but its basic premise. Jones describes a friend Bob, an Episcopalian, who was described as leaving behind “a successful career in marketing and consulting” to attend seminary. He lived in San Francisco, so the seminary of choice was no doubt the one nearby in Berkley. The long and the short of it is that Bob felt that this seminary was not only too liberal, but had its own sense of fundamentalism—that differences of opinion or thought were not allowed. After two years, he dropped out and moved to Austin, Texas.
Jones attempts to make this story about two things: institutionalism and politicalism. His point with the former is that the seminary’s primary interest is not training priests, but defenders of the church, guardians of the institution. And his point about politics is that the Left is as guilty of blind political ambition as the Right; that the institutionalized political stance is the secondary mission of the educational staff. I think Jones, like Bob, has missed the essential point of this story. The point, as best as I can see it, is not the problems inherent with seminaries—let alone this one—but with Bob’s preparedness and theological footing. As a recent seminary graduate, I can attest to the fact that the time before and during and after seminary is among the most emotionally and intellectually trying times of my life. You face previously unrealized truths about the church, scripture, and certainly the nature of God. More importantly, you are asked to face the truths about yourself—about who you are in the midst of this. You are asked to profess, not the church’s faith, but your own—what brought you to this moment—and to describe your call to ministry. I can’t help but wonder if Bob’s angst toward his experience in seminary isn’t simply a projection of his own confusion. Further, his location (San Francisco) should have prepared him for the politics of his seminary. That he reacted in this way seems to say less to me about the institution than it does about him.
A similar story can be found in David Brock. His book, Blinded by the Right tells, in part, of his time at the University of California (Berkley) in the mid-to-late 1980s. It is there that he switches political allegiances because of 1) the perceived excesses of the campus’s liberals and 2) the positivity of a staunchly conservative professor that mentored him. Brock’s story is, in fact, a tragic one of a rise to prominence in the conservative movement of the 1990s through hack journalism and his subsequent fall as his “friends” cannibalize his political career after he is outed as gay. Far from an indictment of the Left—or, to some degree, even the Right—this story served to expose the manipulative nature of the conservative movement at the time—and the degree to which it was willing to go to achieve absolute victory.
I see Bob’s case in light of David Brock’s—that his own personal baggage—about faith, spirituality, politics, decency, truth, etc.—is his primary source of angst. The location and institution merely expose it. His departure from seminary, though difficult, is probably what he needed. I hope that somewhere Bob is dealing with why he reacted this way, and so strongly.
I will examine the role seminary plays into this discussion in a future post, especially in light of our current need to re-examine the role seminary has in the church.
Further Reading:
Tony Jones. The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier, (2008)
David Brock. Blinded By the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, (2002)