5/24-5/25 Gen X/Y

A quick post today, I'll try to post again tonight, once everything wraps up. What a fantastic conference! Doug and Tim are absolutely fantastic and this event has provided a great deal of clarity for me as I continue with my discernment process about church planting.

A few quotes that I've cut and pasted from my notes (and then off to lunch):

“We have detached our imagination from our faith”- Tim Keel

“Our brand of Christianity has been hard on faith because faith involves imagination, dreaming and seeing things that…we had before not been able to see.” - Tim Keel

“I don’t think there’s a more exciting time to be alive than today. I think that for the past millennium and a half, the church has power…Now, for the first time ever, we’re contesting what it means to be Christian in the world.”- Tim Keel

“We need a broader narrative about what God’s doing in the world that’s not differentiated by sacred and secular.”- Tim Keel

Another Lesson in Balding E

Another Lesson in Blogging Etiquette: Do Not Mention the Folically Disadvantaged Head of a Presenter, Especially If He Has a Google Tool Which E-mails Him Every time His Name Is Mentioned In A Blog. (It's Probably Not a Good Idea to do Self-Psychoanalysis Either)

P.S. And in case said presenter, (who by the way is a fantastic, wonderful, awesome, amazing pastor) visits my humble site yet again, I hereby retract my "baldness" comment, especially in light of the steady retreat of my own hairline, which will no doubt have disappeared, along with my hair, by the time I approach his age, judging by my genetics. (In case he's wondering, I'm not calling him old, not even "chronologically advantaged".)

P.P.S. And if he'll still talk to me after said sarcastic post, then I must be a lot more likable than I thought! :)

5.24.2007 Gen XY Conference Mid-Day

First, let me officially send a gloating smirk to my friends, Matt and Farrah, and my fiancée, Melissa, who are not at this incredible conference that is setting my mind on fire as we speak. It’s going to take me weeks, (if I retain anything in my sleepy daze) to process everything I’m hearing. What a fantastic conference!

Notable Quotes from Doug Pagitt this Morning

“Fear is powerful, but is just doesn’t motivate. Possibility has to motivate us.”

“There is no acultural Gospel or Good News, there is only Good News within a context.”

“Every place is as suitable for the Gospel as any other.”

"Truth is always played out in a situation."

Gen X/Y Conference Wednesday, May 23rd

Time I Awoke (Arkansas Time): 3:20 AM

Time I Spent In Transit: 11 Hours

People I Met On the Plane: Claudia, Freddie, and Isabella (who is 11 months old and remarkably well behaved) Martinez

Time I Arrived At the Mount Sequoyah Retreat Center: 3:00PM

Time the Conference Was Supposed to Start: 3:30 PM

Time It Actually Started Due to the Inevitable United Methodist “Technical Difficulties”: 4:15PM

Presenters: Tim Keel (The bearded, earringed, long haired pastor of Jacob’s Well in Kansas City)

Doug Pagitt (The balding, wispy-goateed, completely real pastor of Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis)

The Content of Our “Worship Experience”: 2 Songs, 1 Sermon, Communion, and 1 Song (Which depending on whether you like cookie-cutter contemporary or not, was either heaven or hell)

Time I Began to Lose It Due to Lack of Sleep and Excessive Extroversion: 5:30PM

Time I Ended Up in Conversation With Doug Pagitt: 6:00PM

Number of Times I Unwittingly Spilled Out My Angst Regarding My Discernment Process To A Crowd Of People: One

Number of Times Doug Pagitt was Around When I Did That: One

Number of Conference Presenters Who Now Think I’m Crazy, Uber-Intense, and a Little Bit Troubled: One

Number of Times I Now Wish That I Had Kept My Bloody Mouth Shut Until I Got a Full Night’s Sleep: Beyond count

Memorable Quotes From the Day:

Tim Keel on Losing His Faith: “I wasn’t losing the content of my doctrine, I was losing my way of life”

Tim Keel on Seminary Education: “I felt like I was being trained and going into deep debt for a world that didn’t exist” (And I completely agree with him!)

Tim Keel on Church Ministry: ““The Church has loads of organizations, but don’t have enough organism”

Doug Pagitt on Living the Christian Life: “I got into Chrisitanity thinking that I was going to be a full participant” and ““If I’m going be a Christian, I’m going to be one fully and completely, I’m not going to outsource any part of it”

Amount of Sleep I Got Last Night: 9.5 Utterly Comatose Hours

Hopes For Thursday: To Be Slightly Less Crazy Than Yesterday

I’ll post a midday update if I get a chance.

Wow...It's Been Way Too Long

Hello Everyone,

To my 30 or so readers, sorry for my absence...I have no good excuse, although a lot of good reasons for not being around, like reaching the end of school, renting an apartment, and having some computer issues. So, very briefly, a quick update on my life.

1) Wedding planning continues apace, the rest of the save the date cards will go out this week and we're putting together the details for our reception this week.

2) I start my job as music director and (very) part time youth pastor at Trinity UMC and Monroe Community Church on June 3rd.

3) Melissa and I have rented our first apartment at Birchview Gardens, (I'll stay in it now, Melissa will move in during August).

Also, I will be blogging daily (perhaps even twice a day) in a couple weeks from the Generation X/Y Event, which will be led by Tim Keel and Doug Paggit, who are two of the top pastors in the country when it comes to engaging with postmodernity. Come check it out! Bring your friends!

Gifted and Graced

I remember, going through the candidacy process for ministry, (although whether it was in the official material or not I cannot remember,) a lot of discussion about whether one possessed the "gifts" and "graces" for ministry: gifts being those things that come easily to us, that are blessed and magnified by God in our calling, and graces, those things that perhaps did not come easily to us, but are given to us by God to help fulfill our calling. (For some reason, I don't think this is what the UMC meant by this, but it made sense at the time to my teenage mind.)

This phrase has captured my attention over these past few months, as I continue to recover from a year-long relapse with my chronic illness and at the same time discerning whether or not I am called to plant a church.

Unfortunately, although I would like to be of normal health, I'm not, nor will I ever be. Chances are, the place I'm at now: about 80% of normal physically and not being able to do more than 35-40 hours of work a week without serious repercussions is where I'll be for the rest of my life. Getting in better shape, learning to stick with a routine, and getting extra rest will help, but it will not significantly change my physical capacity to do work over the long term.

Based on this, it looks like church planting would, not be a great option for me. (For that matter, full time pastoral ministry wouldn't look like a great option either.) Church planting involves very high levels of stress, 80 hour workweeks, and few (if any) breaks for rest, especially as the church is getting off the ground.

And still, in spite of this, I still feel a tug to continue discerning in this path, and I will be faithful to that. Ultimately, I believe that if God calls me, then God will grace me with the strength necessary to respond, whether that be through miraculous healing, job sharing, or a setting that can work with my physical limitations. And, if this means that I am not called to church planting, then God will call me to a ministry that will be even more deeply meaningful than the path I'm on now.

I think that we often forget, as a church, that in order to accomplish truly remarkable things, we must trust in God, and we must be willing to risk: in our ministry, in our personal lives, in our finances, in our expectations, and trust that God will carry us., even if we can't see how.

This is certainly one of those times for me.

Holy Week

Every pastor-blogger would understand why I've been mysteriously absent this week- the grueling marathon commonly known as Holy Week. For laity, it is chock full of wonderful worship services, easter eggs, easter dinner, and generally a good (or at least meaningful) time all around. For pastors, it is a long endurance test, at least four services (Maunday Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunrise, and Easter), several sermons, high pressure, and a lot of late nights.

To round up my Holy Weeks stats:
10.5 hours driving, 3 nights getting to bed at 11:30 or later (not by choice), one prayer group, four services, three practices, 10 songs led on Easter morning, and countless cups of tea.

I am simply thankful that I've survived. Once I've recovered, I'll post something more.

Why Professors Should Blog

If anything has inspired, amused, and occasionally annoyed me at seminary, it is that so many professors are under the impression that their ideas can change the world. I've read countless articles and books implying that if people really believed what the author believed about (insert relevant theology/methodology/interpretation here) then the church would be saved, oppression ended, and the world redeemed.

Unfortunately, most of them have chosen a very clunky and cumbersome way to proclaim their message: books. The process of publishing a books (especially an aspiring PhD's student's first book) takes in the neighborhood of five to ten years, and its end result is often so expensive and esoteric that only academic libraries and other professors in the same field can afford to buy it. (And, if it gets really successful, then perhaps it gets foisted off on a few unsuspecting college/grad students as well!) Therefore, the reach of most academic books, (unless they are absolute dynamite) is extremely limited, measured in the tens of thousands, or perhaps even the hundreds of readers, rather in millions.

So I wonder, if professors care so much about their ideas, if they believe, that their ideas can change the world, then why not blog about them?

Blogs carry with them several sizable advantages over books:

1) They're cheap- anyone with a computer can write one, anyone with a computer can read one, without having to shell out $50-$150 for the privilege.

2) They're contemporary- if a burning issue comes up, then you can write about instantly, rather than having to wait 5-10 years to get a book published (at which point it is automatically outdated.)

3) Their success based on merit- If (and I admit, this is a big "if"), you engage with other blogs and post interesting, compelling material, then people will read your work. It doesn't require a PhD, a slick proposal, or connections with a publishing house to get your ideas out there.

4) Their potential audience is gigantic- An academic book reaches a very small subsection of the population (measured in the tens of thousands), a successful blog could reach millions.

Granted, there are some drawbacks. Blog posts don't lend themselves too long, complicated, interconnected arguments. However, with the advent of easy to make e-books, or even publishing on demand, it is still possible to disseminate more complex academic works to a wide audience. (In fact, blogging provides a built-in customer base for any would-be book author.)

Therefore, may I suggest to all the professors reading this post (of which I believe there might be one, who is already online here), if you truly care about disseminating your ideas, blog!

Liberal Tolerance Is A Lie

I was sitting in class this evening, and someone brought up a book that a lot of us were reading in a separate class, Purpose Driven Church. Immediately, almost everyone gasped in horror and disgust (someone even made the symbol of a cross at the book!) The passage in question, Rick Warren’s suggestion of starting worship with an upbeat song (never mind that most mainline churches do that) became the symbol of all that was wrong with evangelicalism- shallow, demanding only a one time commitment, and giving no impetus for long term discipleship. At the end of the conversation, the book symbolized everything wrong with all those big churches and those conservative pastors: it was “manipulative”, “shallow”, “boring”, and “irrelevant” for mainline ministry.

This was blatant, first class, shameless, theologically fundamentalist stereotyping. In the end, for many of my classmates, Rick Warren’s conservatism invalidated everything he said about pastoral leadership. Furthermore, their criticisms willfully ignored huge stretches of the book where Rick Warren talks about member’s rigorous discipleship training program (which would put most of our mainline churches to shame) or where he notes that his chapter on worship primarily refer to “seeker services”, which are geared exclusively for non-Christians, while members get a service with more depth later in the week.

I am not surprised by this episode, but I am disappointed. It’s a shame that my classmates, who have been lectured by liberal professors time and time again to “read a text in its entirety” and to “not prooftext”, have just willfully done exactly that.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time I’ve seen this happen at Drew. (And if you talk to any conservative student at my school, they can tell you stories about the times they’ve been stereotyped or even demonized by other students and professors.)

Oh well, so much for that much vaunted liberal tolerance.

Zoom!

Churches often encourages their leaders, especially their pastors, to be culturally static. The pastor is expected to dive head first into the church’s little universe- their social circles, their traditions, their activities. Many pastors take this leap for what seem like good reasons:

1) Why take time getting to know non-Christians in the community when I can spend time building relationships with the people who will support my ministry (and pay my salary)?

2) Why listen to “secular” music (or for that matter, engage with secular media of any type) when I can fill my heart and mind with music that will bring me closer to God?

3) Why participate in activities in the larger community (e.g. school board, community theater, rec-league sports, etc.) when the church needs my help for their programs (e.g pot luck suppers, family fun night, meetings, etc.)

This thinking entails that ministers have little contact with the outside. Their perspectives get warped. Inch by inch, they begin to think that their church members are the norm for the wider community: that everyone knows what words like “doxology” or “benediction” means, that activities beloved by the church will appeal deeply to the unchurched, that advertisements and promotions that resonate with our church members will touch the wider community as well.

If we, as the church, are primarily concerned about engaging the community for the sake of transformation, then this is a deadly rut. Seth Godin, who I have blogged about before, talks about the same phenomenon with business leaders, and has a technique to help them break out of their ruts, called “zooming”. The premise is this: in today’s world, cultural/technology/business shifts are happening so quickly that it’s important that business leaders remain flexible. Therefore, successful leaders must consistently challenge their norms by engaging by continually challenging their assumptions and their routines. (He suggests simple techniques, like taking a different route to work in the morning or listening to a CD from a genre of music that you don’t like.)

This technique is equally important for church leaders. So, here are a few tips for how to start zooming, church style:

1) Get involved in the community. Join a book club, a community theatre, or a volunteer project and build relationships with people who don’t go your church.

2) Keep track of cultural trends- subscribe to a few blogs, watch the latest popular television show, or turn on the radio to the top-50 music station to see what people are listening to.

3) Change up your spiritual life- experiment with new spiritual disciplines, read parts of the Bible that you’ve avoided (and preach on them!),or find a spiritual director to help keep you accountable.

4) Read the top books in both church leadership and business leadership, especially from those who will directly challenge you. (e.g. Adam Hamilton, Peter Rollins, Shane Claibourne, Seth Godin, etc.).

5) Never say “I don’t have enough time! The church needs me to do (insert important ministry here)!” This is as (perhaps even more) important than your committee meetings, pot luck suppers, and other church-centric activities. Churches that effectively engage with their community grow spiritually and numerically. Churches that remain isolated die. If you, as a church leader, can’t break out of your box, how will the congregation ever be able to?

Another Quick Post

You know you're getting old when it's 8:30PM and your body's telling you it's time for bed. So, since keeping awake right now is my greatest concern, I'm going to keep this short. First, a stream-of-consciousness preview of topics that I'd like to write about in the next few weeks. (And you, my faithful reader, are allowed to harass, threaten, or blackmail me if I don't come through!)

1) Zooming (Another Seth Godin idea)
2) Why Professors Should Blog
3) Who is Church?

Finally, links to a few nifty websites and posts that I came across this week.

1) Swap your paperback books here
2) Wikihow- wikipedia plus how to manuals
3) How to save electricity
4) An insightful post about privilege and charity in the West

A Quick Update

I’ve been meaning to post regularly, and over the past month or so, I’ve done pretty well. However, with the craziness of this past week, I blinked and realized that it was Saturday, I hadn’t posted in a week, and I was driving home the next day.

So, with my abject apologies, here’s a quick update on my life. I’m home this week, so I have absolutely no excuse for not posting again.

At any rate, here are this week’s highlights.

1) I got into my inaugural accident on Wednesday evening. Note to all you young drivers: always check your blind spot before you switch lanes, especially during NJ rush hour. Thank goodness, the other car wasn’t damaged, but my front side driver’s door is not looking good, and my driver’s side mirror was completely obliterated. The car is currently camped out in a NJ body shop, getting fixed.

2) Yes, the wedding plans are coming along. If we really like you (and have your e-mail address), expect a save-the date e-mail by the end of the week. The rest of you will have to wait for it to come in the mail, which will happen hopefully next week!

3) School is remarkably sane. My chronic illness is under control, my coursework is reasonable (and I’m even enjoying most of my classes), and supervised ministry at my church continues to be enjoyable and challenging.

Stop Preaching! (Part Two)

(Scroll down to see my first post on this topic)

Deemphasizing preaching is not as radical idea as you might think. While the United Methodist Church (and indeed, almost every church) considers "Proclaiming the Word" and preaching synonymous, this has not always been the case. For instance, while there were itinerant preachers in the Middle Ages, they were not people's primary source of information about the Bible. Rather, they learned through visual images, such as stained glass, which, through a complex code, communicated not just a Biblical story, but interpreted it as well for the viewer.

Let me briefly suggest some ways to remedy the overemphasis on preaching.

I wonder then, what it would be like to "proclaim the word" to all people, paying equal attention to all intelligence types.

What it would look like if we proclaimed the wold in a way that appealed to intrapersonal intelligence? Maybe it would be lectio divina, where people "pray" the scriptures, listening to them several times, meditating on them and possibly sharing how God spoke to them afterwards.

What it would look like if we proclaimed the word in a way that appealed to bodily-kinesthetic intelligence? Maybe it would be a series of stations where people had the opportunity to create something (e.g. draw, paint, write, do a ritual) in response to a text.

What it would look like if we proclaimed the world in a way that appealed to interpersonal intelligence? Maybe, rather than delivering a sermon, you could lead a structured discussion on the text, preparing by having some key points, researching the text well, and providing relevant illustrations based on where the discussion goes.

Once we remove ourselves from the "preaching" box, the possibilities are endless.

Stop Preaching! (Part One)

We are a word-addicted church.

We open our worship with written words on a page, read litanies for special occasions, sing songs with complex lyrics from a hymnbook, articulate our doctrine and structure through 800 pages of, yes, words, and feel like we've accomplished something at Annual Conference when we pass a resolution in print.

This word-addiction is especially apparent when it comes to preaching, one of United Methodism's self-proclaimed hallmarks. We have licensed people as "local preachers", we talk proudly about the great "traveling preachers" in the early 1800's, we make all our seminarians take a class on preaching (though not necessarily on worship), and for most churches, "The Proclamation of the Word" (which is always the sermon) comprises the central part of the worship service.

This is a horrible, inexcusable tragedy.

Now before you run screaming to my local DCOM or BOOM (and if you don't know the words for these acronyms, then you can hardly be called United Methodist!), or earnestly inquire as to what they're teaching us at those crazy "liberal" seminaries, let me explain:

The study of multiple intelligences tells us that people understand the world and make connections to it in different ways. Some people acquire information best through hearing something (musical, linguistic), others through images (spatial), others through doing something, (bodily-kinesthetic) some through interactions with others (interpersonal), others through self reflection (intrapersonal), others through music, etc.

Consider for a moment then, how many types of intelligence a typical sermon reaches, delivered verbally from a pulpit on a Sunday morning (by the way, this exercise works equally well with learning styles.)

Can't come up with many?

Well, neither can I.

The typical sermon, the vaunted "proclamation of the Word", the very center and climax of a typical Protestant worship service, appeals almost exclusively to only one type of intelligence- linguistic intelligence. All other people are left in the dust, required to either adapt (or simply to tune out). (And yes, you may point out that we do have hymns that could appeal to musical intelligence, but remember, most are sung to 150 year old tunes with 150+ year old lyrics while being played on an instrument that went out of style nearly a century ago. I think traditional hymns have a lot to offer us, but our rabid, exclusive devotion to our ancient-white-people style of music doesn't always speak to today's worldview and culture.)

Needless to say, when the central part of your worship service primarily speaks to only a small group of people, you have a problem.

YouTube Goodness

United Methodist History in Claymation (Watch this soon, it's being taken down!)

Scambaiters convincing would-be scammers (the type that e-mail you to share about their 100 million dollar bank accounts) to do the classic Monty Python "Dead Parrot" sketch

What I've Been Reading

Here's what I've been reading this past week:

1) A fantastic and very disturbing series of articles (Part 1, Part 2) in the Washington Post on how injured soldiers returning from Iraq are treated.

2) A post by a blogger on how to buy original art at reasonable prices.

3) A short article on how to improve air quality in your home.

The Great Methodist Rip Off: Part Two

How could a denomination offer materials in a way that is affordable for their members and fiscally responsible for them? A few ideas:

1) Don't overcharge for books. For instance, Cokesbury.com regularly prices its books a few dollars higher than their competitors. You lose sales and goodwill when your built-in customer base (e.g. UMC clergy and laity) have to go other places to find affordable materials.

2) Offer good free materials on the internet. You don't have to give away everything. Instead, pick and choose what resources to highlight. For instance, you could give away the worship planner (see previous post), chapters of recently published books, or a few top quality articles in .pdf format.

3) Offer the majority of your resources online as a subscription. For a scaling annual fee, offer hundreds of articles, out of date books, worship resources, planners, etc. The denomination gain a constant revenue stream that would pay for offering the materials online and churches would have a genuinely affordable option when looking for resources.

The Great Methodist Rip Off

I was thinking about the penny pinching, miserly nature of our connectional hierarchy as I learned today that the General Board of Discipleship (which, now that it's been renamed GBOD, must now be automatically relevant) has taken their weekly hymn resource off its website. This planner provided suggested music across all UMC music resources based on theme and scripture for each week. Apparently, (my fiancee had used it) it was quite well done and extremely useful when constructing a service every week.

When, in preparation for leading Sunday worship, she visited the site, she found that they had been taken down, and that instead of getting these resources for free, they were now only available in a $16 book.

Our blessed worship people made a passing effort to explain their decision, saying that they're responding to "customers requests" to have all the planner in one book, (what customer requests that you remove a free product and charge for it instead?) "flexibility of use" since the resources are now in one place, (why not add cross-searching abilities into the web site or simply publish it as a free .pdf for download?) , and, believe it or not, due to "price concerns", after all, since it's only thirty one cents a week, anyone can afford it. (How generous of them! Especially considering that churches were paying nothing for it before!)

I do give them credit for listing customer complaints at the bottom of the page. However, they never respond to those complaints specifically, instead simply assuring us that they thought seriously about it.

Quite frankly, if they're going to take away a free resource and make us pay money for it (and yes, for a poor seminary student like me, $16 is a lot of money for a resource!), then be honest with us and admit you're doing it to make a profit. Pretending that you removed the resources from the website to help out "customers" (by the way, customers? since when are the constituents of the churches who pay for your budget via apportionments mere customers?) is dishonest and condescending.

Rather than giving us the resources to equip us for our ministries, they're going for a cheap buck and hoping we don't notice. Unfortunately, this seems to happen across the board in United Methodism. It's the reason why "our United Methodist Publishing House" doesn't give away ANY resources,and charges prices that are significantly higher than places like Christan Book Distributors and Amazon.com. It's the reason why there are Wesleyan Foundations (UM college fellowships) that can't use the Methodist order of worship because they don't own a book of Worship and aren't an official United Methodist Church (Contrast this with the Episcopalians, whose entire Book of Common Prayer (which is far more central to their worshipping life than the Book of Worship is to the UMC) is open source, free to anyone to use).

When a denomination overcharges its members for the resources you need to do ministry effectively, then you know it's in serious trouble.

More Contextless Links

While I'm sitting in front of the computer, cleaning out my bookmarks...

A Church for the Homeless

Surviving (and thriving) on $12,000 a year

Malcom Gladwell (writer of Blink and Tipping Point) on how to solve homelessness

Global Warming: A Fact, Not a Debate

This past Sunday morning, I learned yet another important lesson of pastoral leadership: set two alarm clocks on Sunday morning.

Whether it was a glitch or my body frantically beating the alarm clock into submission while I slept on peacefully, I’ll never know, but instead of getting up at 6:00AM, with plenty of time to pray, practice my sermon, eat breakfast, and get to church for the 8:15 service (I have a one hour commute, one way), I opened my eyes, thought it looked rather light out for that early in the morning, and checked my alarm clock to find out that, in fact, the time was 6:55.

I uttered an utterly unprintable (or rather, since this a blog, untypeable) phrase or two, got up, and, fueled by some incredible combination of panic, adrenaline, and blind fury, was out the door, dressed, packed, shaved, and showered in twelve minutes, and at the church by five minutes to eight, due to some speedy driving on the highway and the judicious running of one red light. (And, as an aside, to my mother, who is probably the only person reading this blog right now, I know that was really foolish (esp. running the red light) and I will never ever ever ever do it again, especially if I plan to blog about it afterwards!)

Needless to say, everything turned out okay. I even beat my pastor to the church (which, come to think of it, is not a great feat). However, I shudder to think that in an alternate universe somewhere, that I stretched, rolled over, and found out that it was 8:30AM. Thank God it wasn’t this one!