Musings of a Liberal Bad Habit

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

2012-01-16T11:06:00.002-06:00

Last Friday while out for a walk I got a phone call telling me that one of my members was in the hospital. It was after visiting hours but I figured since I was near the hospital I would stop by and if they were awake pay them a visit to see how they were doing. When I got to the hospital, despite the hour, I was taken to see the patient. While it is possible they would have done this for anyone, what is more likely is that they respected the fact that I was a pastor. That kind of trust is humbling as a pastor. Certainly I believe I am trustworthy but it is touching to experience it when all a person is knows is that I am a minister.

Recently the Supreme Court heard a case between a church-run school and a teacher at the school. The Court ruled that because the teacher's position was considered to be a religious position, the church was not subject to ADA requirements and was able to dismiss her because of a disability. This is an important statement for churches. It affirms that the fact that the state, in order to allow for the free establishment of religion will not make laws that effect churches (or other religious institutions).

While I support the decision of the Court, I feel it gives us in the church a great deal of responsibility. Just like the nurses in the hospital, the Court, and really the people of the United States are trusting churches to use our freedoms well. We should not see this as license to discriminate however we want without regard for the law. But instead to see it is as people trusting us that when our religious views differ from the law, we have the right to maintain our beliefs even if they run contrary to popular sentiment.

When I look at the actual case argued however I am saddened by the decision of the school. Yes, they are correct in arguing that they are not LEGALLY obligated to continue to employ the teacher. What I fail to understand is what their theological justification for it might be. It seems rather that the school is using the convenience of the religious exemption in order to fire someone from a position, not because of theological differences but because for health reasons. Their actions were consistent with the law of the United States but I do not see them as being consistent with their faith.

Our society, despite the challenges caused by scandals in the church, continues to respect religious leaders and religious institutions. I believe that we in the church need to be humbled by that respect and by the freedom we are granted under the law. We should not take it for granted, nor should we seek to abuse it. Instead we should do all in our power to deserve that respect and make the best use of that freedom. To do otherwise is to do an injustice to the people of this country and to our faith.

Brand Identity

2011-12-12T11:02:00.001-06:00

A friend of mine posted a link to a NY Times article and took issue with the author's comments at the end ..

We need a Steve Jobs of religion. Someone (or ones) who can invent not a new religion but, rather, a new way of being religious. Like Mr. Jobs’s creations, this new way would be straightforward and unencumbered and absolutely intuitive. Most important, it would be highly interactive. I imagine a religious space that celebrates doubt, encourages experimentation and allows one to utter the word God without embarrassment. A religious operating system for the Nones among us. And for all of us.

My friend observed that most if not all United Church of Christ congregations would fit this criteria. From my experience serving a joint UCC/UMC congregation and having worked with other UCC churches in my ministry I would have to agree. The United Methodist Chuch has also struggled with brand recognition. For the last ten years the UMC has been trying to increase people's favorable views of our denomination through marketing campaigns and local church efforts. The results have been favorable as our "positive" recognition continues to rise.

Is this all enough? I personally believe that both the UCC and the UMC have a lot to offer people looking for a community of faith. I believe that both of these denominations have churches that fit the requirements from the NYT article. But I think that we miss the point if we simply shout back that we are here, that we are doing that already. The genius, in my opinion, of Jobs was not creating something new, it was creating it/marketing it/packaging it in a way people who needed it could get it. Where our churches often struggle is that we forget that not everyone recognizes how amazing our communities of faith are. Yes, I really do think they are amazing. We do not make our opportunities accessible to those on the outside, those who really need it. Our churches become like archaic mainframes or desktops, failing to realize that the world has moved on to different devices, even though we can provide the same services, if people just knew how to access us. I think we should see the sentiments of this article as a challenge. If we really believe we have something great to offer, how do we change so that people can take advantage of it. How do we adapt to the shifting needs of those who are lacking a spiritual community, who need a life-changing presence? How do we "think different" and make faith simple to access? How do we tell people we are here?

Working Hard or Hardly Working

2011-12-01T11:18:00.001-06:00

I recently read an article on Forbes.com that talked about how we overly malign the infamous 1% of the OWS protests. The op/ed talks about how instead we should be respecting these 1 percenters and seeing them as positive role-models. The point that seemed to come across strongest was that we did not respect how hard working these people were. "1 percenters generally have the nerve, drive and self-assurance that the rest of us could only dream of. We see where they are or were, but what the envious among us never consider is what they did to get there." This is perhaps the most frustrating line of the piece. I am not trying to say that the top 1 % does not work hard, I am sure they do. I object to the idea that they make more money than me because they work harder than me.

Now I will be the first to admit that I am not the hardest worker in the world. I did not study hard in high school, continued that tradition into college, and only marginally changed my habits in seminary. I certainly admit to lacking self-assurance, and I have no idea how much drive or nerve I have, relative to the average person or 1 percenter. I would question however how much of my lack of drive is a product of my current financial status. I think it actually has more to do with my motivations. I could have worked much harder in college and seminary and the only difference might be how much debt I came out of school with. The churches I serve would not have been able to pay me any more money, and even if they could pay more it would not move me any closer to being a 1 percenter. Even a bishop in The United Methodist Church does not make enough to be in the top 1% of income, so not matter how great my drive and ambition, I cannot be a 1 percenter if I continue in my current line of work. So really my failing is not just not working hard enough it is not working hard enough in the right profession.

The real reason most of the 1% make more than me is not about hard work, it is about what work we value. In our society labor is not valued, capital is. This is clearly expressed in the article

Considering the myriad business owners that dot the American landscape, as owners they’re often demonized for their possession of the means of production. What’s left out is the grand deal they’re offering the 99 percenters who work for them.
Basically the owners provide the capital, conceive the business plan, and then if the plan fails, as owners they stand to lose all that they ventured. As for the allegedly exploited laborers, they get paid no matter what. Not a bad deal.

The real risk is not to the laborers but to the owners who might lose all their money. Now, obviously no one wants to lose their money but I think we forget that this is a lot easier to replace than say the health of the workers. There is a reason that many professions have 30 and out clauses allowing for early retirement, because the physical stress of the job causes lasting damage to the body. I even suspect most NFL players, proud members of the 1 percenters would rather lose the money they make while in the NFL than suffer the debilitating and often fatal effects of concussions and other work related injuries. Instead our society tends to reward those who risk the capital and lead the company much higher than we reward the workers who are doing the "less important" jobs of making the products to be sold.

Do I want us to enter into some sort of socialist/communist state? Probably not, but I do want us to have a better appreciation for the role that everyone plays in our society. I think there is a real danger, and this articles seems to back that up, that we forget about the contributions of the many because of the work of the few. Aaron Rodgers is celebrated for how hard he worked, and paid accordingly, but no mention is made of how hard his high school coach might have also worked with Rodgers to improve him. In fact the HS coach probably worked just as hard with the next QB after Rodgers graduated who never became a star.

I think my frustration with the entire OWS conversation is it feels like in the end it gets reduced to those who have and those do not have. I think this is a false dichotomy. Its not really about who makes money and my problem is that society seems to have forgotten that. Its really about what each of us is doing to make ourselves, our communities, and our world better; whether that is through invention and running a company or it is through working for that company; whether that is preaching or playing football. In the end we all need to do our best ... and then we can all be a part of the 1% and the 100%.

Can We All Get Along?

2011-11-23T11:14:00.001-06:00

I recently came across an argument about whether or not Catholics should ordain women as priests. One point raised was that men and women have different roles/abilities and that the inability of women to be priests did not diminish them because they have other roles. Now I am not an expert in Catholicism and so I have no intention to try and sort out what it is about a priest that makes them need to be male. I also would agree that a call to ordained ministry does not make one more important or more loved by God than a call to any other form of ministry (teaching, cleaning, child-raising, farming, etc).

The question I want to ponder is whether different views on a topic like ordination can actually be hurtful and incompatible. The relativist in me would love to say that if the Catholics or Baptists are all happy not ordaining women then that is fine and that is something we can respectfully disagree on. But does it really end there. It is one thing to disagree on something like Communion ... does it really become the Body and Blood of Christ. I believe it does not literally transubstantiate but the Catholics do. For that reason out of respect for them I do not take Communion in a Catholic church and I would understand if they did not feel that elements blessed by me were not the same as those done in a Catholic mass. But the ordination of women seems to point to something deeper. By refusing to ordain women, some denominations are saying that they do not believe women can adequately perform these roles OR are not called by God to do so.

Obviously the ordination of women is important to me ... after all I was baptized, confirmed, married, and ordained by women. If they are not really called by God then I have a serious problem. Maybe I am over-reacting and it does not bother women but it does seem like differing views on the ordination of women are not something that is easy to just respectfully disagree on. I like to try and see things from other people's viewpoints but I am struggling to see how such a view of ordination does not diminish women ... or at least say that we how believe women can be ordain are wrong about God's call in their life.

Ordination of women is just a simple lens for larger issues. One might raise the same questions about the roles of women (or other minorities) in other parts of society. If I am right and there is a lack of compatibility, does that make it our obligation to seek to change things? We push for fair treatment of children in other countries, the rights of women in general, is it the place for Methodists and Lutherans to be pushing for Catholics and other denominations to ordain women? This feels like a murky issue to me and one that it is hard for me to totally sort because I am neither a women nor one who does not think they should be ordained, so in some ways I am an outsider to the questions I pose. Still it is one that I am struggling with ... any thoughts?

The Church and Sexuality

2011-11-16T12:29:00.000-06:00

Over the last couple of weeks, issues around sex and sexuality keeping coming to my attention. Some of it may be that I have been reading through Leviticus with its chapters on sexuality. A recent program on MPR talked about the sex and teens, and a Glee episode recently highlight three of the characters losing their virginity. Through it all what became clear to me is that the church has lost its voice when it comes to sex. I do not believe this is simply because society has passed us by or that we no longer hold a position of power in culture. Both of these are true but I think they are actually effects, not causes. I think the cause is the fact that we have not tried to say anything. Okay, maybe we have tried to say something but it basically seems to amount to saying "NO" really loudly and then sticking our fingers in our ears. I am young, so I do not feel I am in a position to make generalizations about older generations BUT I do know that lots of people my age have had sex and most did not wait until they were married. It could be the case that this was true of older generations but while it happened in older generations I suspect it was flipped around, most waited until after marriage and a few did not.

So what can we do in the church about this? I think we need to do some serious thinking about how sex fits into our theology. As I have been reading Leviticus I am reminded that there are two really strong concerns there 1) incest is bad ... even without a modern understanding of DNA, the Israelites knew that it was bad to sleep with close relatives 2) knowing the father is important ... again, without the benefit of DNA the best way to determine paternity in a child (and thus inheritance) was to have there be only one option for who the father was, the husband. If everyone had multiple partners it could quickly become hard to decide who was the child of who and therefore who inherited what.

So what can we learn from this? One response could be to simply maintain the prohibitions as put forward in scripture. Unfortunately for many, myself included these seems unsatisfying. There are lots of aspects of scriptures that we disregard today, like the purity laws. Some of these can be said to have been modified in the New Testament (Peter is told that no animal is unclean to eat) but others are never really addressed (don't where a shirt made of two fibers). I do not do well with senseless prohibitions, I want to understand the rule so that I can whole-heartedly follow it. This is where I believe the church fails. We do not do a good job of explaining why we think it is spirituality better to wait until marriage to have sex. Too often we reduce things simply to God/Bible says so. I think it is our task as theologians to look for more.

It is clear that more and more people are not waiting to have sex. More and more people are having sex earlier and earlier. If this is a bad thing, and I am inclined to think it is, then I think we need to a better job of talking about it. It is not easy, for many it is awkward, but I think our silence on the issue has its own effects. Too many young people believe the primary concerns about sex before marriage are based around issues of safety (STDs) and pregnancy. If we believe there is something more to the issue, a value in having a single partner for example, then we need to find a way to talk about that and express it. For some people the simple understanding that it is wrong to have sex before marriage will work. But increasingly for both those within and outside the church it seems to be failing. If we want to maintain our stance I think we need to do some serious thinking and theologizing about why if we ever expect society to listen to what we have to say on the matter.

Taxes and Tithes

2011-07-27T09:12:00.000-06:00

So I have been watching the ongoing debate around solutions to our current "debt crisis" and amidst the frustrating rhetoric and political machinations it has occurred to me that maybe Washington DC is not really the source of all our problems. I am wondering if instead maybe we are. What are our criticism of those in DC? Usually we complain that they are self-motivated, out for themselves, not thinking of the greater good, etc. Washington is full of corrupt individuals who have lost touch with the rest of us. Is that the case, or do they actually more accurately reflect us?

In 2008 Mike Huckabee made a big deal about a fund he had set up as governor. Without be totally sure of the details it was basically a chance for people to pay more in taxes than required if they wanted to. He used this to illustrate the fact that no one wants to pay more in taxes, since the fund only got a few thousand dollars in it. While I think he used it for political showmanship, I think there is actually something more to this. Why was no one willing to put a few extra dollars in their annual envelop to the government? When things are tough financial at church we ask people to give a little more and usually people find ways to help out, whether it is for unexpected building repairs, to help out with a need in the community, or even just to deal with a church's "budget deficit problem." I think there are two reasons for this; we don't feel like our contribution would make a difference towards a tax problem and also we are not convinced others would do their part as well. There is a third reason, which is that we are not convinced that the government would spend the money responsibly, but while there is some truth to that, I feel like it is also something of an excuse.

In the end I think many, if not all of us, act with our own self-interests when it comes to taxes. We don't want to pay more than we have to and we want others to pay their fair share. There were two main arguments against raising taxes on the wealthy in Minnesota. One was that it was an example of "class warfare" ... making others pay instead of us. The second reason was that the rich would simply leave the state if we taxed them more. So excuse number one was we were being selfish in just wanting to tax the rich and not ourselves. The second excuse was that the rich were selfish and would look for a cheaper state to live in. So is it just the politicians in Washington who are greedy and self-motivated, or is it really all of us?

If taxes were like giving in the church, how much would you give? What value do you place in your government? Would taxes end up being like the tithe is today ... we all know we should give 10% but on average most church goers give far less. Would we end up doing the same with taxes, giving a fraction of what each of us really needs to give to have our government do what we need/want/hope for it to do. Maybe government has gotten too big. Not in the traditional sense that people mean when they say that, but so big that we lose track of it. We dehumanize it, thinking of those involved as mindless or selfish, forgetting what it is that government does to help each of us. What if we started thinking of our taxes as what we give to make our nation great, to help it truly be the land of the free and the home of the brave. Would that help us each April when it comes time to right the check? Maybe not, but I think it is worth thinking about.

How Do You Tip? (and why?)

2011-07-20T12:33:00.000-06:00

I have been doing several different pre-marital session in the last couple of weeks as I prepare for some fall weddings. One of the handouts I use talks about the different ways that we value money. These are money as security, money as prestige, money as enjoyment, and money as control. While I can respect why it is that people value money for the first three, the last one, money as control, strikes me as a bad thing. Using wealth as a way to exert influence over someone just feels wrong to me. It goes against that fundamental notion that we are meant to have free will. Once we start seeking to control others, we remove some of that freedom.

I ran into an interesting experience of this today as I was dining out for lunch. I had finished my meal and was waiting to pay for it. The server had dropped of the bill and then disappeared. I quickly got out my card and waited to give it back. Several minutes later I was still waiting. As the time passed and my server clearly remained busy with other tables, I became more frustrated. One of my first thoughts was to tip less because of the lack of service. In a very small way (a dollar difference) I was planning to use my money to influence the behavior, to reward, or in this case punish behavior. As I wrestled with my emotions it cause me to wonder if it was a good thing or a bad thing to see money as a form of control, and whether any control could really be a good means to an end.

What are we trying to accomplish when we tip? Are we seeking to reward good service? (A way of thanking the server for a good meal/experience) Are we giving money in hopes of influencing future good actions? (We tip well now hoping to get even better service the next time.) Are we simply tipping out of social necessity? (Since in general restaurants do not pay their servers enough to really survive with out tips.) Is tipping just another way we use our money to exercise power and control? As my brain tries to work this one out I come out with unsatisfactory answers on either side. Using money to control actions seems wrong, but at the same time, isn't that exactly what we do every day when we buy food, pay our bills, and participate in any other part of the service based economy? Is the real issue with money that how each of us has is so imbalanced, so that a server at a restaurant has to work hard for each dollar that others of us have to give away at our leisure? Though maybe the real question is why I still cannot type restaurant correctly? (thank you spell checking)

Thoughts on Compromise

2011-07-12T08:51:00.000-06:00

As someone living in Minnesota who likes football I am confronted daily with three great examples of the challenges of compromise, the NFL Lock-out, a shutdown state government, and a national government heading towards a self-created show-down. Personally I find the last one the most frustrating because the only reason we have the problem is the same people who cannot decide on whether to raise our debt limit already voted to spend the money. The state government can blame conflicting messages from voters and the NFL is doing the time honored thing of fighting as hard as possible to get as much as possible. Regardless they all are great examples of the challenges of compromise.

As the "peace-maker" second child I think I am partially wired towards finding compromise. (as a note to my family who might be reading this, I am not claiming I actually am good at making peace, just that studies tend to say that the second child often falls into that role, I probably also create my own share of conflict as well) The question comes however, when is compromise a good thing and when is it not. Are there times that it is better for there to be some conflict, some struggle, in order to work out a solution? Are there things you simply cannot compromise on? At least on the national level there seems to be a race to stake out clear uncompromising positions on various issues such as taxes and entitlements before any negotiating actually occurs. This seems to go against the ideas of compromise. If you sit down convinced you cannot change your mind, what is the point of negotiation?

Where I get stuck in all of this is between what I think are two equally compelling realities. As a Christian I have strong opinions informed by my faith. For example I believe we are called to help the marginalized, the poor, the sick, those in prison, etc and that this call is made quite clear as a key part of what Christ wants us to do. So I would personally be prone to calling that an uncompromising position. I would also consider equal treatment for everyone to be a similar position. So what happens if I were to have to negotiate with someone who did not share my values? Should I simply refuse to budge, trusting in my reading of scripture and my faith in what God's call for the world is? Or should I be willing to give up on some of my principles so long as they are giving up on theirs as well?

I think the danger comes when we see everything as zero sum, win or lose, yes or no. True compromise comes when we see each others' points of view, when we understand where the other person is coming from. Then it stops being about who wins and loses but how we all succeed, how we all win. Personally I found the best way to do this is through patience and through prayer. I have been in numerous tense situations in meeting where people of different opinions fought unyielding over issues. Things worked out better when we were able to pray together, to break bread together, to worship together, to be reminded that in spite of our differences we really are all the same. Will that really solve all our problems, maybe, but even if it doesn't it seems like a necessary step to reaching a compromise, something which is good for all of us.

More Musings on Words

2011-06-28T13:56:00.000-06:00

I know that this is not the first time I have spent some time musing on language and the important of words. I blame my education for that ... but I came upon an interesting article the other day that once again got me pondering. The article is about the importance of how we talk to young girls and a reminder that our language matters and shapes how we think about things. I noticed this again on Sunday when I caught myself referring to God as "he." It was not a deliberate choice but something that just slipped out as a side reference. It was probably as much an issue with the lack of a good third person, neutral pronoun as it was with how I imagine God. Even if I do not mean to be gendering God (if that is the right way to describe it) by referring to God with male language, it can be an unintended effect, just as talking to girls about how pretty they are (and what little girl, or boy is not cute in our eyes) incidentally reinforces the notion that beauty is something the child should desire and seek to obtain.

Language is amazingly powerful ... how we speak about kids can change how they perceive themselves ... so what if we used it in a positive way, encouraging them to be desperately seeking to be better learners, more creative thinkers, better stewards of the earth? Why don't we use peer pressure to teach them to value all these good things instead of beauty and popularity and these other things that seem so destructive to our society. At the same time why don't we spend more time talking about God in variety of ways. The Hebrew scriptures alone have so many names for God. I know I tend to think in very limited terms, loving God, gracious God, wondrous God, all of them are basic adjectives combined with God. Instead maybe I need to use a greater variety. In doing so I will begin to expand how I see God, how I experience God, and in turn how those around me see and experience God.

Musings on Memorial Day

2011-05-26T12:04:00.000-06:00

So I was doing some research this week on the origins of Memorial Day using the infallible source of all knowledge, Wikipedia. From there I gleaned two fascinating bits of knowledge that I wanted to spend a little time musing over.

1) According to my source, you are supposed to start the day by raising your flag and then lowering it to half staff as a salute to the dead. At noon however you then raise it again as a sign that we are lifting up their memory and are rising up to not let their fight be in vain but instead are carrying it on ourselves.

2) Memorial Day was originally a day to remember those who has died in the Civil War and was later expanded to include those who had fallen in other wars.

The second point works well for me because it is easier to gloss over all the other reasons that people go to war and remember the Civil War as this "fight to set other men free." Obviously that is a very pro-North viewpoint and simplifies the war only to an issue of freeing the slaves. But freeing those in slavery is a cause most people can get behind, so it is a great place to start.

So if Memorial Day really is about honoring those who have died in the cause of freedom and justice for all, what does it mean for those of us doing the honoring? How are we picking up the cause and advancing it forward? Slavery was abolished in the United States legally years ago, but it still exists in other countries, as well as perhaps in covert ways here (and even the NFL and college football according to some). Sex-trafficking is a prime example of this but certainly not the only one. Where is our outrage about this? What are we doing to shame those who engage in it, to bring them to justice, to fight to set these people free. Are there other forms of slavery (economic, political, social) we should be fighting against? What other threats to freedom and justice exist. I am not advocating yet another war for our soldier to be involved in, but maybe something that each of us can work to end.

Memorial Day does not have to simply be a salute to those who died in bloody wars and by extension glorify those sorts of conflicts. Instead it can be a lament of those who have died that others can be free, and a dedication that we will work as hard as possible to make sure that more do not have to die in this struggle. What are we memorializing this weekend? Is it war? Is it freedom? Is it a fight against evil? I am sure our answers are all different, but I love the reminder we have in the raising of the flag. We remember those who have gone before us and are called to make sure that in our lives we make their deaths not be in vain

What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas

2011-05-17T10:34:00.000-06:00

Last night I attended a bachelor party for a friend of mine. While the group of us were hanging out there was talks of taking embarrassing pictures of the bachelor throughout the night and posting them to Facebook. To my knowledge this was never done (though I did leave early since I had a 2 hour drive to get home). Still the thought of sharing what goes on at a bachelor party seems almost antithetical to the event. Bachelor parties are one of those "sacred" events that seems to have an aura of secrecy around them. What happens at the party stays at the party. Just like what happens in Vegas, or on the mission trip, or whatever, stays with that group of people

On the other end of the spectrum is the "over-sharing" that occurs through things like Facebook. Suddenly the whole world can know what we had for breakfast, how much we drank last night, or that we are off in the Bahamas. Some of the information is mundane and some can be potentially damaging, giving people a view into a part of your life you might want to keep private (like your drinking habits) or letting people know when you are not around ... which is valuable information for burglars.

All of this raises the question to me ... do we keep too much secret or not enough. Secrets are great, they give us a feeling of power, control, and of being in the know. We have something that others do not. The flip side of that same idea is that it creates separations between in the in group and the out group. Between the haves and the have-nots. All of this leads me to wonder what the best course to follow is. I worry what it says that there are parts of our lives we hide from other parts of our lives.

As a pastor I am constantly confronted with the merging of the public and the private, those things that I share with my parishioners and those things that I keep separate. While perhaps harder than other jobs it is not necessarily any different. An NBA team executive recently came out about his sexuality, something he had kept private from his work life for years. We all probably have those things we worry about the people who write our paychecks knowing about. In the end however I worry the secrets are bad. That we encourage a notion that somethings are just for a select group of people and in doing so we create barriers between ourselves and the world. The barriers may keep us safe, but they also keep people away. If I don't share things about my life with my parishioners, is it fair to expect them to do the same?

Maybe the real question to ponder is whether or not we have reasonable expectations for secrets. Do our expectations meet the categorical imperative ... that we would want others to live by the same things as us. So do we want to know about others the things we keep secret about ourselves OR are we comfortable with others keeping from us the same information we keep from them? That might be a question for another day

I Like Winning!

2011-05-12T08:52:00.000-06:00

So this may not be a shock to people who know me, but I like winning. I like games and competitions and chances to test myself, to prove myself. And while the trill of the competition itself is nice, in the end I like to win. For that reason I find it much more enjoyable to play games I think I can win and especially nice to feel like I have some "ace in the hole" solution to pull out when things get tough. Almost like a parent running gamely alongside their kid, knowing that if they wanted to they could put on the extra burst of speed and make it to the finish line first. Or the tortoise, plodding along but knowing in the end that slow and steady will win the race, no matter how fast the hare goes at first.

On Saturday I ran in the Lake Minnewaska Half Marathon. Having run the Twin Cities Marathon twice, the mere 13.1 miles seemed like a nice obtainable goal and a great way to get involved in something in my new community. I did most the suggested training for it and entered the race feel at least somewhat confident in my ability to run and finish the race. I started towards the back of the pack, figuring that like in the Twin Cities Marathon I would have a chance to slow pass a number of people through the race. Instead I watched as the main pack of races continued to move further and further a head, and while there were always a few races behind me, there was not much chance of moving up at the pace I was going. As the miles went by it became more and more clear that this was not going to change. At one point I began to wonder if I would be able to finish at all. I did not have an "ace in the hole" ... there was not some trick I could do. Not only was I not going to really beat anyone in the race, I was also not sure I would finish at all. In the end I did finish, I "dug deep" and kept plodding along, finishing 55th out of 77 and 11th out of 12 in the 18-30 male division. Not terrible but certainly not great either.

We have lots of great expressions like "winning isn't everything" that certainly apply here. I did a get a sense of satisfaction for finishing the race. And despite the rain and the pain in my legs, it was mostly an enjoyable experience while I did it. But during the race there was a nagging temptation to not make it about winning. "I am just doing it for fun" or "I am just a casual runner." Both of those were true, I had no illusions about winning or placing well, and I am certainly a casual runner. At the same time it bugged me I could not do better. At the same time I really did want to succeed. Is it helpful to try and turn off our competitive drive when we think we cannot win? Is it helpful to try and move the goal posts so no matter what we can make them? What do we lose in the process? What do we give up on when we are not trying our best? What do we lose when we do just focus on winning instead?

I do want a spend a moment connecting this to the church, cause that is part of why I blog ... but I hope the thoughts above stand on their own and so if you stopped reading now it would be fine ...

I think we are at a time in the church when we do not know what winning looks like (though we are probably sure we are not doing it) and we are at a time where it is tempting to look quickly for some goal posts we can make it to, we can succeed at. Certainly the desire to win is dangerous, especially if it starts to be our raison d'etre instead of serving God. On the other hand, not competing, not trying to "win" seems antithetical to our call as well, especially if we defining winning in terms of the great commission and bringing about the Kingdom of God ... do we really have a choice but to seek after these things, to run this race that is before us. The nice thing about a race is that the goal is defined by someone else ... you will run 13.1 miles or 5k or 26.2 or whatever the distance is. We need to find a similar goal for the church, so that those of us who want to dig deep and compete have something to aim for, something to push us forward and hopefully move us all in the same direction.

The Tragedy of Death

2011-05-03T13:48:00.000-06:00

Like many others I have been listening, watching and reading all the coverage there has been of the recent death of Bin Laden. I have been overcome with a wave of different emotions as I contemplate all that has occurred and what it means. In the end I am left with sorrow. I remember 9/11 and what that day was like. What I remember most about 9/11 was one of the professors at Beloit College, sitting on the steps, crying, weeping that this would undo all the work that had been for peace, for tolerance, for justice. Now, almost 10 years later can we really say that things are over? Did the death of Bin Laden really change things, or is it just the next domino in the tragic chain that has been rippling through our lives since those towers came down, since those airplanes were transformed from methods of transportation into methods of destruction and death?

On April 30th, Hitler committed suicide rather than risk capture by the oncoming forces, on May 1st, Bin Laden is killed by US forces and if we enter the realm of fantasy, on May 2nd, Lord Voldemort dies in the Battle of Hogwarts. Three people who would often be attributed with evil. Three people who ordered the deaths of hundreds and even thousands. And yet today as I prepare for Mother's Day on Sunday I came upon these words, written to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. "We shall not commit injustice in the name of justice done ... we shall not seek honor in the death of any mother's son ... Christ's peace shall reign on earth"

All three of these individuals, terrible though their actions may be are someone's son. If we forget that, we become like them, able to see death as nothing more than a means to achieve our ends. If we are to recover from 9/11 we must find a way to reverse this, to undo this cycle of violence that only spirals onwards. Now we live in fear of reprisals for our actions, counterattacks by followers of Bin Laden seeking to avenge his death which will only cause us to need to avenge more deaths. Is death totally avoidable? Can we truly live nonviolently? I would like to believe so, but whether or not it is possible, I know this, even in the death of someone like Bid Laden, there is cause for sorrow, here is someone's son ... here is a child of God ... what can we do to make sure that other sons and daughters do to not end up the same.

"Onward" a better Call to Action?

2011-04-26T10:41:00.000-06:00

While I do not plan to blog each week about the book I am reading, the latest book I have read, "Onward" by Howard Schultz feels particularly fitting for the church. The book is written, with help of course, by the CEO of Starbucks who talks about how he came back as CEO as Starbucks and the economy were in the midst of a downward spiral and eventually managed to turn Starbucks around even as the economy continued to languish.

Obviously the recession was not good for Starbucks, but Schultz's feeling is that Starbucks was hurting even before then and the economic downturn only magnified or perhaps revealed flaws that were already present. In fact he really seems to feel that the past success of Starbucks and its rapid growth became a barrier to its further healthy growth as a company. In the midst of massive store openings and rampant success Starbucks began to lose focus on its innovation and even its core value of providing great coffee and a community environment, a "third space."

Starbucks was able to turn itself around in part because it stopped resting on its past success, it stopped allowing pressure for further such growth to distract it and instead returned to its core purpose as a company. Could we in the church learn something from this? One of the challenges is that denominationally and even at a local church level we lack someone with that same level of power that a CEO tends to have. We also lack the same focus on a few core things. While we have powerful statements like "making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world" they lack the concreteness that would actually help us know what we as a church are supposed to be doing. Are we meant to be a "third space" in the community like Starbucks? Can we even compete with companies in that realm? How do we know when we have made a disciple or transformed the world? While Jesus gave us really big goals to shoot for, I think to turn the church around we need to hone in on what we are really trying to do.

For the last 40 years mainline churches have been declining in worship attendance and in membership. Why this is happening is the subject of numerous books, but perhaps just as telling is I am not sure we could actually say why this matters. Can we actually point to the fact that our decline numbers MEAN we are failing to make disciples or transform the world. Thanks to our obsession with reporting in the UMC we can say that we have fewer professions of faith, one measure of discipleship and we could also look at our churchwide giving to various missions, one way of transforming the world. Do these actually tell the whole story? Maybe we as a church need some concrete sense of what we are going to try and do, what difference we are seeking to make in people's lives, then we would know what to be focused on, what we can look at cutting, and maybe be able in the future to see how things begin to turn around.

"The Dangerous Act of Worship"

2011-04-18T12:40:00.000-06:00

As part of my goal to read more books I have been trying to work through the large stash of books I have acquired but not read over the years. I just finished a book called "The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God's Call to Justice" by Mark Labberton. In it he talks about how the church, by in large is asleep, that we are failing to respond to the call of the Gospel on us and failing to live out our full potential. In particular he names the fact that we tend to seek worship services that are comforting rather than disturbing. He advocates that worship should in fact be something that awakens us to the need to do God's work in the world.

On the one hand I certainly have been guilty of what he has said. Like most people I want to be liked and so like most people I respond to positive affirmations and shy away from negative ones. I know that no one wants to hear that they are not giving enough, not doing enough or failing to love their neighbor as much as they should. Instead we want to hear that we have already done more than enough, that we are well on our way to earning a gold star. Preaching sermons that challenge us or worship services that raise questions about how much, or maybe how little we are doing runs counter to these tendencies. At the same time, my reaction is to wonder how often we need "wake-up calls" do we really need to be reminded each week of the work we have to do in the world? In fact if we emphasized it every week wouldn't we dilute the effect and desensitize ourselves to such a message?

The more I think about this though the more I think that being reminded regularly, even weekly about the need to be doing God's work in the world is exactly why we encourage worship on regular basis. We need to constantly have this put before us or it gets lost amidst everything else we are doing. We might have occasional moments of awakening, but generally we become lax if we are not constantly spiritually prodded towards action. It may be hard to accomplish on a weekly basis, but I think we need to try and make sure our worship does push us out into the week, out into the work we need to do. Spiritual rest is important. Sabbath is necessary, but so to is a constant call to action, a constant reminder that justice is what our work is about, loving the least, the last the lost, that is all of us, and bring God's good news into the world. It is a regular action that needs us, something we must constantly place before us, otherwise we lose sight of it in the midst of all the less-pressing but more present distractions in our lives.

What does it mean to be in a "rebuilding year"

2011-04-11T11:33:00.000-06:00

Bishop Sally recently raised an interesting idea in her column for the Minnesota UMC website, http://minnesotaumc.org/BishopsCorner/TheBishopsMessage/tabid/40439/Default.aspx, she raises the question about whether like many sports teams the UMC is in a rebuilding year. While I would certainly agree that by comparison it does not seem we are positioned for a championship run, nor are we really in a perennial contender category if our continued decline in membership and worship attendance are any indicators.

What does it mean for us to be in a rebuilding year? In sports that can mean one of several things, it can simply be an excuse to fans while you try and sell tickets in the midst of a slump or it can be a dedicated attempt to try and build up a team from the ground up. Usually a team that is rebuilding does not look for the quick fix of the free agent hire but instead works on building through drafting good young players and honing their skills through careful coaching and development. In a rebuilding year the concern is less about attendance numbers, wins and lose, and instead is about growing that new base of players. Older, popular players are often traded to acquire young talent, more draft picks, or simply to free up salary and save money since their effectiveness will be diminished down the road when the team is ready to move into a contender role.

So what does that mean for the church? If we are really in a rebuilding time, what are the "young draft picks" we are developing? Are these new churches? New lay leaders? New clergy? New ideas and practices? What are the old standbys that we need to trade or let go in order to leave room for the new players AND reduce our costs during this phase?

I see two dangerous paths ahead for the church if we are to play this analogy out further ... we risk becoming like the Cubs, a team with an incredibly long drought of not winning 102+ years and counting. In the last 10 years the Cubs have seemed desperate for a winning season, to take the team to the next level. They often have signed big name players and gambled their future in hopes of finally winning a World Series title. This does not seem unlike the UMC, at least as I experience it, prone to jumping after quick fixes and new ideas in a hope of quickly turning things around, afraid to face a long process of rebuilding and more years of loss members and diminishing numbers. Perhaps a worse fate than being the Cubs is being the Browns, a football team known for losing, whose fans almost seem to relish the loss of hope in their franchise (I may be exaggerating here). When a team loses so often for so long you almost become numb to the losing, numb to the defeat and truly despairing that any change will make a difference. I hope this is not where we are at.

If we really are in a "rebuilding year" do we have the patience to see it through? The willingness to face more loses in hopes of a greater gain? Are we willing to trade away our current star players and favorites to have a real hope of making disciples and transforming the world?

Growing for Growth's Sake

2011-04-05T08:48:00.000-06:00

A month or two ago I did a funeral service for someone without any strong church connection. For that reason they chose to have the funeral service at the local Eagle Club or Aerie as I believe they call them. Now I knew about service clubs like the lions, and I was familiar with the Elk and Moose Clubs we had in town but I had never heard of the Eagles. While I waited for the time of the service I spent some time wandering around looking at the walls. They had lots of posters extolling the virtues of things like Fraternity and Loyalty. In addition there was a whole string of awards. Every award was for growth. Basically if you club grew in a given year, or decade you got another award for your wall, another patch for your banner.

Now, I know that clubs need to grow, that bring in new people is a healthy thing and all of that, but I walking around and just looking at things I could not figure out what the point of the Eagle Club was expect growing ... well and gathering together to share a few drinks. I college one of my excuses for not joining a fraternity was that I did not need to pay for my friends. This seemed a lot like that. I realize that fraternities are about much more than just paying to have friends ... and I suspect the Eagle Club is the same way, but the message I got was that the point of the club was to grow.

My question is ... are in the church any different? I am as guilty as the next person of wanting the church to grow just to grow. As a member of a liberal, mainline denomination I get tired of hearing about how we are dying out, dwindling away. I would love to be able to have some proof of growth that I could shove back at those who argue this is because of our values, our seminary education, the way we worship, or really anything about us. I would love to have some scientific proof that our church is not in decline. But should we be growing for those reasons? The mission of The United Methodist Church in Minnesota is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Now disciple making implies some growth, whether it is growth in numbers or just the development of the people who are already a part of the church could be debated. Transforming the world does not require growth. Growth might stem from such action and growth would certainly help such action, but growth is not sufficient or even a necessary condition for transformation to occur.

If we were going to have banners and celebrations each year, maybe they should be around transforming the world ... harder to measure than growth, but ultimately what I believe we are called to do.

Beyond the Facts Ma'am

2010-08-09T09:17:00.000-06:00

USA Today recently published an article about an increase in young pastors going into seminary. While the information in the article was well put together what struck me were the listed reasons for young people suddenly coming to seminary in larger numbers. In the tagline for the article they talked about alturism, demographics, and the economy being factors. In the text of the article they focused more on increasing demographics and spent some time on denominational efforts, but even then the focus was on scholarships and other incentives or help. What went under-represented in my mind was the real reason people go to seminary and more importantly become pastors ... a call to ministry. While scholarships help people repsond to a call and a lack of money can hold someone back from seminary occasionally, I would like to believe that it is not simply an increase in number of young people in general that has cuased the increase in people going into ministry. The challnge for the church in the midst of this is to not get caught up in these facts but remember we believe in some other factors as well. I believe that God calls people to ministry not based on demographics or scholarships or anyhting else, but on a need. To me the rise in people hearing a call to ministry is thanks in part to the work of denominations that encourage young people to know they can be called but also because God is calling more young people to meet a great need we have in the church. I am reminded of when Jesus talked about needing more workers for the harvest. From USA Today's perspective the facts are about demographics and scholarships. From the Church's it is about people help others repond to the call (like Eli does for Samuel) and about how God is calling more people to the work of the Church. The real story is not about the facts but about what God is still doing in the Church.

Money as Speech

2010-07-27T08:18:00.000-06:00

My brother is the Supreme Court expert, not me, but I know at some point the Court determined that use of money is a protected form of free speech. The Court also recently ruled that corporations are people too ... or at least they get the same rights as us. Polls seem to indicate that in general people support the idea that giving money to campaigns is a form of free speech and should be protected and thus not restricted. At the same time I think we have a reluctance to recognize the other ways that we let money speak for us. Target Corporation recently gave money to support a business minded Political Action Committee (PAC) ... that PAC then gave money to support Emmer, the endorsed GOP candidate for governor in MN. This obviously upset a portion of Targets faithful shoppers who had no intention of personally giving money to support Emmer and do not like the idea that a fraction, however small, of the money they spend at Target is going to support someone they do not support. I feel like I could spend a great deal of time discussing the pros and cons of Targets choice to support Emmer (who the PAC considers the better candidate for big companies) but I would rather focus on something else, which is why more of us do not remember that like Target we have the ability to use our money as a form of speech as well. I am not saying we should all go out and give the legal maximum to whataver candidate or party we support but instead we should consider what other ways we make a statement with our money. We could make a statement that we do not want companies using profits to make campaign contributions, and not give our business to those companies that do. Or we make a statement by shopping at local business over big corporations, or buying Fair Trade coffee (or similar brands) instead of other types of coffee. Every dollar we spend can be used to make a statement, just like ever word we say expresses something. Are they all of equal importance, probably not, but I feel we do ourselves a disservice if we do not think about what we are saying, with our mouths and with our wallets. I may not place a lot of trust in corporations, but I do trust that they are willing to do what it takes to make money, and so the message that each of us sends with our dollars makes a difference ... maybe now we just need to be more intentional about what that message is.

Creating Ritual

2010-06-28T08:42:00.000-06:00

I have been challenged to create a ritual to help me in the starting of my day off, my Sabbath. Today it seems like the most prevelant ritual is TGIF ... going out for a drink or something special to initiate the weekend. Obviously there are more detailed and beautiful rituals in the Jewish faith for the starting of the Sabbath. Recently I am becoming more and more of the value of ritual and the deliberate work it takes to create them. Rituals get their power through repetition and through intentionality. I think my laid-back nature tends to make it hard for me to practice ritual well, but at the same time there are unintentional ways that I am creating ritual all the time. I say a similar offering prayer every week, moving my hands in similar ways. I pray the same pray before I preach (unless I forget). All of these things work, intentionally or otherwise to create rituals for me, for the congregation I serve.

So what are good rituals to create when it comes to time off, Sabbath, the weekend. Is it a time of silence observed at the end of work ... a release of what I have been working on and an emptying before beginning a time of rest? Is it a "drink" at the end of the day ... some way of clearly marking that work is done because the fun has begun? When does the event occur? At sundown? When the last meeting is over on Thursday? Before I leave "the office" or when I get home? Maybe the reason that pastors, myself include struggle with having a healthy Sabbath time is that we struggle with the boundaries of our Sabbath. When you work odd hours and work outside an office as well as in it there is not a clear transition point ... that 5 pm Friday commute where you move from the world of work to the world of the weekend. We talk about boundary violations in ministry a lot, but usually we are referring to boundaries between people. Instead we maybe need to be talk about boundary violations between our time and God's time ... between work and rest. To begin to talk about that I think we first need to find ways to mark the boundaries ... otherwise it is hard to know when we have crossed the line. Pastors really do need ritual to help us move from one space to another.

Death to compromise?

2010-05-11T08:19:00.000-06:00

For weeks I have been stewing about the increasing divisiveness and growing polarization in our society. It seems that people are digging deeper and deeper trenches and not only demonizing the enemy, but anyone who consorts with them. I recently found myself discussing how this even creeps into the church and it seems that we fail to be the good Body of Christ, and instead fall into the trap Paul talks about, where the eye says to the ear I have no need for you. I believe we are stronger because of our differences.

So then last night someone I was talking to brought up this news report they had seen on Fred Phelp's church, famous currently for picketing at soldiers funerals, not to protest the war but because they believe the soldiers deaths are God's way of punishing the US for our "lax" stance on issues such as homosexuality. So where does Fred Phelps and his followers fit into the Body of Christ? There is a part of me that wants to say they are the eye the causes the rest of us to sin and so we need to pluck them out ... but that makes me no different from them, or from the "with us or against us" attitudes that are currently irritating me. It is true to my feelings though ... I feel that the concept of the Body of Christ, the notion of a loving God is hurt by a church that only talks about who God hates, which seems to basically everyone. How do we speak out against them, enter into dialouge with them, maintaining their validity as equal children before God, while still saying we have major differences that drive us apart? What can we do to help everyone realize we are One Body ... and we need to be more comfortable with our many many parts?

Just a few words ...

2010-04-27T08:17:00.000-06:00

I was reminded recently about the power of the word "just." If you are like me the word just tends to slip into sentences without much thought. Its meaning slowly taints what we mean to say. Just is one of those challenging words because ironically enough it causes us to make judgements. I am not talking about "just" as in "the trial was just." What I am talking about is more along the lines of "the trial was just three days long." Now if the trial only lasted three days then the trial really was just three days long ... but we can also read that to mean the trial was only three days long and it could have, or even more judgmentally it should have been more.

Where this because real to me is when we start talking about faith. In The United Methodist Church we celebrate open communion, and there are times I try and define this as saying that "we just ask that you seek God in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup." Now this might be the only requirement we ask but I would hope we realize it is not a simple one. One does not "just seek God" in a casual and minimalist way. It is not like saying we "just ask you to bring yourself" or other statements where just is meant to diminish a require and minimize the cost. When it comes to some maters of faith, just is not meant to minimize something it is meant to expand it. Maybe what is closer to the truth is not "we just ask ..." but instead "we ask that you just seek God ..." Still that same message of only God, but now not in a way to make it easy but in a way to make it hard.

What do we just ask of people ... and how do we limit ourselves with such a simple word ... but those are just my thoughts. :)

Fair Trade

2010-03-23T10:53:00.000-06:00

I talked today with Pastor Rory after he returned from India. He was telling me some fascinating stories about the experiences with poverty he had while visiting a ghetto there. He talked aabout seeing a sweat shop where workers used modern equipment to make brand name merchandise, except the brand was not applied in the sweat shop, it was applied later so that no one would have to claim they knew it was coming from a sweat shop.

All of this got me thinking about what kind of clothes I buy, when I buy clothes, which is really not that often. I started doing some research on Fair Trade clothes to see what that would look like. I found several sites that talked about their clothing coming from union run places, usually in Canada or the US. On the one hand that seems like a great idea, buy more locally, buy clothes that are made at a reasonable wage level, and do my part to help create a more sustainable economy.

There seems to be a secondary question though. While on the one hand deplorable buying clothes from sweat shops does have the advantage of providing these people with some sort of income, some sort of job. Is the community better for having that income lost? Wouldn't there be risk of hurting the economy of India, especially those most impoverished by removing those jobs, even at their poor wage levels from the economy. I remember reading that Gandhi, when he started a strike on British made clothes in India in favor of locally made products sent money to workers in England who were out of work because India was no longer shipping cotton there for work. He did not want the effort towards financial independence and workers in India to be won at the expense of workers in England.

I love the idea of buying local, of building up local ecnomies, but I also am aware that we are part of a global a community and our buying decisions have an impact on people everywhere. Sadly my 9th grade level understanding of economics does not make it easy to parse out the best way to help everyone. In the end I think we just need to be deliberate, to try and do our best for everyone, and to know that we are going to make mistakes, but to do so hoping to helping everyone, not just ourselves. At least that is what I think right now.

When I am president ...

2010-02-16T09:23:00.002-06:00

I was at Baxter Elementary School this morning and in honor of President's Day they read a short essay one of the kids had written about what they would do if they were president. It was basically work for peace, feed the hungry, care for those in need. It was quite touching. It was beautiful in its simplicity, in the lack of partisanship in it. There were no litmus test answers, what the child's stance on abortion, terrorism, universal health care, any of it. All I heard was a concern for others. I do not like to be negative about politics but I fear that too many of our politicians, maybe too many of us who vote have lost that youthful idealism, that politics is about making the world a better place. I am not saying we cannot disagree, I am not saying we cannot want to do different things to make the world better. What I am saying is that we need to remember that making the world better is what it is all about. This has become quite clear to me as I read the political news lately. Senator Bayd of Indianna, a moderate democrat, is not seeking re-election because he believes the system is broken and he cannot bring the two different sides together. Senator McCain of Arizona is facing a fight in his Republican primary because he is not conservative enough for some people. It seems that both sides forget about making the world a better place and instead become focused on making sure the other side does not get the credit for doing it. First Corinthians has a great line ... "when I was a child I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I became an adult I put away childish things." Maybe we need to get back to thinking, dreaming, hoping, acting like children, or maybe the problem is that we who are adults are still acting like children and it is time to grow up. Whatever the way you phrase it, I think the bottom line is we need to get back to the basics of politics, serving the people, making the world better, and stop worrying about how is winning when we do it.

Forms of worship

2010-02-12T09:32:00.004-06:00

I was interviewed this week as part of the ordination process and one of the things that I talked about was how we were changing the worship style as we launched New Light to better fit with my own personal style. Previously I had always done worship in the form the congregation had. Now we were trying to find the right form for me. It has been nice to explore the ways that I want worship to be and to find the things that fit for me.

All of this raises some interesting questions. My wife recently attended a workshop on worship that talked about different worship styles and different needs people have for worship. It is no secret that worship tends to be attended more by women. One theory for this is that our worship styles tend to be more appealing for women and it probably creates a certain cycle. If we accept the premise that worship appeals to a certain type of people, those are the ones most likely to then be inspired to go into ministry and thus their own style of worship will likely be similar to the one they experienced their call out of. This is not always the case but it seems like it would have an effect.

One of the things people often joke about is how worship for them is on the golf course, or while fishing. Now, as someone who golfs (sort of) and who finds a great deal of worship and beauty in nature, I can appreciate that there is some truth to this, but I also think it is a bit of a cop-out. Still it raises the question, for someone who worships in active ways, what does worship look like?

I think the real question I am wrestling with here, is whether there is something fundamental to worship or is it all contextual. Some people want active worship, some want passive, some want loud, some quiet, some want to be talked to, some what to have a chance to respond. Is there really anything central to worship other than God. Isn't it that the case that everything else is extra, everything else is just personal preference. So how do I find the ways to encourage people to find their own worship style, not as a way to get out of showing up on Sunday morning, but as a way to help them truly experience and relate to God? How does the church, equipped with this knowledge go from centuries of really offering only one or two styles of worship, to basically encouraging infinite variety? Do we even need to offer all of them?

Playoffs

2010-02-04T09:07:00.002-06:00

So there is a part of me that thinks I blogged about this a year or two ago ... but it is on my mind right now, so you are stuck with a potential repeat.

As we prepare to launch worship at New Light UMC in Baxter, I am forced to take every Sunday worship like it is a playoff game ... "win" or go home. It adds pressure to the moment, but it also I think brings out the best in a person like me. I take preaching seriously ... after all I am trying to communicate the Word of God. Just the same, I find myself focusing even more on it, and well everything when each service has a greater meaning, a greater impact.

So what I am pondering is this ... why haven't I been like this before now. Why don't all churches, all pastors bring their playoff level play to each week? Is it because we just cannot find the time to do it? Is it because we do not have the same immediacy to drive us? Does it simply not help enough to be worthwhile in the long run?

I think the answer is mixed ... I think for me there were times when I was just too busy, there is also a part of me that does not see the rewards of more work enough to inspire me to try harder. I was hearing on MPR last night about people who scan luggage for guns that as the percentage of bags with illegal items decreases their ability to spot them also decreases, the brain actually gets worse at seeing the same things. I wonder if it is not the same way with worship. There are weeks I slave over the sermon, polish the ideas, and really work at it, and in return get no more complimants or even fewer than usual. Other weeks I struggle with writer's block and end up with a final product that I feel is sub-standard, and people love it. It is hard to evaluate the effects of our effort.

The bottom line however is that worship is not about winning, it is not about being attractive to new members, it is not about anything except the worship of God. If we do that well, nothing else matters. If we do that well, everything else will fall into place.

2010-01-25T09:28:00.002-06:00

So I fence, a sport where the object is to hit another person with a sword, and yet largely it does not hurt if done properly. In fact most of the pain caused in the sport is accidentally or the result of poor execution. By contrast, football is a sport where the object is to carry a ball across a goal line and yet causing injury seems to be built into it. While there are ways that you are not allowed to hit a person, and times that such actions are penalized, there are a lot of "clean" hits that leave a person in a great deal of pain.

I have always justified my participation in fencing as being ok, because the intent is never to cause harm. As a proponent of non-violence I would find it hard to be a part of an activity that encourages violence. I spent last night watching the Vikings Saints game. In general it was a very good game, but one thing was unsettling to me. For the second week in a row the Saints went into the game with a strategy that to win they were going to cause as much harm as possible to the aging quarterback they faced. They were not doing it out of malice (I assume) but simply under the theory that an injured person gets a little nervous the next time someone is flying at them and might make a mistake. It all is "legal" and in that sense a valid strategy to win. But for me it is unsettling.

Is it morally justifiable to cause harm under the auspices of a game. On the one hand the Saints could argue they were just as open to being hit, that the Vikings could do the same to them, and so there was nothing wrong with it. But there is a part of me that feels at a deeper level it is wrong to normalize causing harm. In addition to creating an atmosphere of aggression, it can lead to glorifying the very same things. The recent concussion scandel in the NFL can maybe be traced to this same atmosphere that encourages players to slam into each other as hard as possible, to ignore pain at all costs and to do what they can to cause pain to the other side. I recently heard one annoucer decrying a penalty for an excessive hit, implying that some of the players might as well be wearing skirts. Even if you ignore his appalingly sexist remark, the implication that some players just are not tough enough was a problem. The sport needs people who will handle more pain.

Now I am "picking" on football because I just watched it last night, but the reality is that video games, other sports, movies, etc, all do the same thing. They all find ways to normalize harm, to encourage a culture of violence. If a person, such as myself, does consider it wrong to encourage acts of violence should we find other sports to watch, other movies, other games? They exist. Even movies like Harry Potter do a good job of allowing for violence to exist, but showing it in a way that does not glorify it, but instead raises the question if there is not that "still better way."

I like watching football, I like the strategy, I like the excitement, I like the plays. But is that enough ... does the violence seemingly inherant in the game mean I need to find something else to watch? Or is there another way to play?

God of Silence, God of Noise

2010-01-20T09:13:00.002-06:00

When you look at the Bible, God seems to be presented in one of two ways, abundant noise, great light, complete vastness, such as how Moses tended to experience God, a God that is too awesome to behold. On the other side of the coin is the God of Elijah, the still small voice, the God that exists not in great fire or earthquake but in the silence behind the wind. That still small voice can be seen in other religious texts as well, such as the Tao Te Ching, which talks about how the Tao is found in the emptiness, the silence, the void. The bottom line is God does not tend to be found in the middle or maybe in the middle we find Jesus, but that sounds like a different topic so I am going to ignore it for the purposes of this blog.

Do we tend to find God in the noise or do we find God in the silence? I imagine it is different for different people. I know people who have heard or seen God in a visual or audible way, others I think find God the most in the midst of noise, hymns of praises, songs that rock with the beat of the spirit.

In general I find God in the silence. When I talk to God I do not hear the answers, but I do get a reply. I find my heart being turned, my mind pushing against something that redirects me, that leads me to look at it in a different way, to me that is the silent prompting of God, a way that God communicates even in the silence, even just in my mind. These last few days I have found God over and over again in streets of glistening white, trees silvered by the frost. In the still and the silence of that beauty, my heart is enlarged with the presence of God.

Where do you find God? Does God appear in noise and in brilliant fashion, or in stillness, silence, peace? Or fine, does God appear in that middle form, that balance of silence and noise that is Christ? Where do you find God? When do you seek for the divine?

Insert profound thoughts here

2010-01-13T09:12:00.002-06:00

I have been staring at this blank page for about ten minutes ... clicking over to Facebook or email in hopes of a distraction thinking "what can I say today." I have wanted to get back to blogging for a while so I am trying to build back up good habits, but the challenge I face now is what in the world do I say. What I think makes it hard for me when it comes to all social media sites, blogs, facebook, etc, is the need to feel profound. Maybe I take Mark Twain's comments about opening your mouth and proving you are a fool to seriously. Maybe its the fact that I hear to many criticisms from others about the inane nature of these new forms of communication and want to make sure I am not feeding into that. Maybe it is just that I want everyone to think/realize how smart I am, so I only want to say something if it is really profoudn. Whatever the reason it tends to create a certain amount of writer's block when it comes to things like blogging.

I know that I am not the only who struggles with this either. Often I am at the other end of, people not wanting to say to much to me because they do not want me to know how much they know, or do not know about the Bible or faith. I think we have all heard the expression "there are no dumb questions" or "no wrong questions." Do we take this to heart?

Maybe the real question is are we better off with the information deluge we are currently faced with, having to sort out the nuggets of useful information from the vast sea of stuff that is just not helpful or relevant to us. Or are we better off losing some of that information, because people like me are unsure we have somehting to contribute or do not think what we do have is worth offering up. Given the interesting "rabbit holes" I have followed by clicking on links and reading blogs and posts, I would say more is better than less. So whay do I always air on the side of less?

Two Sides Not So Far Apart

2010-01-06T09:10:00.002-06:00

I grew up in a family passionate about issues of peace and justice. As such I a grew up listening to people like Peter, Paul and Mary, Tom Paxton, and other less known folk singers like Charlie King. We did not really listen to pop music and certainly did not listen to country. Our music focused on causes of social justice at home and abroad, and the plight of workers and the everyday guys kept down by governments and corporations.

When my older brother graduated high school he worked for a couple of summers at my aunt and uncle's business and while there he picked up some country music habits from our cousins. What he brought back proved my "worst" fears that it really was all about drinking and women and pickup trucks. (okay, not really, but enough to at least confirm my own stereotypes.) I continued in my own preferences for "better" music and neer really gave country much more thought ... except I still associate Garth Brooks with playing Golden Eye 007 on the Nintendo 64, which my brother and I did a lot that year.

Since marrying a woman who was born in Tennesse, sister lives in Texas, and parents live an hour north of Nashville, I have obviously had more occasions to once again encounter the genre that is Country. This Christmas I went to a concert at the Rymen (home of the Grand Old Opry). I have to admit I cannot remember the name of the group we listened to but they again went a long ways to confirming my concerns about the message of country ... which at its worst seems to be about drinking, the glorification of alcoholism, some questionable treatment of women, and jingoism. Now that is not to say I did not hear some great songs, some funny songs, or some talent musicans as well, but some of the negatives did stand out as well. Buried in those "negatives" was something else as well, a great respect for the blue collar, hard working, individuals. What surprised me the most was that late in their set they began singing a song "I Shall Be Released" by Bob Dylan ... a song I knew from listening to Peter, Paul and Mary.

There are a lot of differences between folk singers and country singers ... especially when it comes to politics and such, but deep down at the bottom both them hold this same fundamental passion for the everyday person. It gets approached in different ways, we have different ideas of what is right and good and all, but in the end we all want the same thing, we all want freedom. It is easy to get stuck on our differences, the "negatives" we see in each other. What I was reminded of at the country music concert was that we also have the a lot fo the same values at heart as well.

I was also reminded that next time I go to a country music concert I am sitting in the non-alchohlic section.

Election Day tribute?

2009-11-05T09:44:00.003-06:00

While it is perhaps a couple of days delayed I wanted to take a moment to reflect on our practice of elections in the United States. First of all, this year we are given a powerful reminder, that despite issues and concerns, Florida in 2000, Ohio 2004, Minnesota senate race in 2008, we have a strong election system. Looking at the challenges that places like Afghanistan face in holding their elections and keeping them fair, I think we have a lot as a country to celebrate. I am a huge fan of democracy and all that it does to help all of us.

That being said, on the eve of election night I feel like I saw a "still better way" to quote Paul. As a part of the Long Range Planning process at Park, the committee was asked to help select a track, or direction for our church to take. The conversation was started by everyone placing their vote or preference and then we tallied the votes. Of the 41 cast, the leading track had 18, while the others had 11, 11, and 1 respectively. While not a full majority, since everyone could cast two votes, it was reasonable to assume that of the 21 people voting, a majority cast at least one of their votes for this direction. In our election system that would seem to imply a win and time to move on. One of the values we have as a part of the process is the consensus model which means while the vote told us how people were feeling in GENERAL we also care what people are feeling SPECIFICALLY. The question was then asked of everyone in the group is this a track that you can get behind. The question was not, did you vote for it, or was it your first, or even second choice but instead, can you get behind this track. Obviously if it was your first choice that would be a yes, but even if it was your last choice you could still look at it and say "yes, I can live with that." This is not the first time I have worked with a consensus model but it reminds me of a key difference that exists between it and our current political process: on a national level everything is about winning.

If you are like me, at some point you have gone to the polls and voted for someone, but really what you probably wanted to do was to vote against the other person. You may have agreed with the person your were voting for, but your real issues was what the other person stood for. Unfortunately our political system is based not on what is best for EVERYONE but instead what is best for a majority, or even simply what is best for a majority of those who actually vote. Ironically I think our country was founded as a democracy but with specific measures put in place not support majority rule, but to protect minority rule from it. As it was explained to me, one of the reasons for the Free of Religion clause in the Constitution was because most denominations were worried about what would happen if someone else got the majority. Europe had been torn about with religious wars based around majority rule, the US, which actually had a clear system of determining it, wanted to prevent that from happening.

What would it look like if we had a more consensus model of elections? What if our politicians were worried not about what is best for some people but what is best for all people. Are we even geared to think that way anymore? Everyone can think about what they do not like and block that from happening, suddenly there would be tax cuts for everyone, since no one would want to raise their own taxes, but is that really the solution? I am not saying our current tax code is fair or good for everyone BUT I can also say that while no tax code would be fair it would not be good, since if we want government we kinda need to support it somehow. It challenges all of us to think beyond what we want in the moment to what is really important for all of us.

So once again, I love our country, I love the right to vote, but I sometimes wonder if maybe we need to rethink what we are voting for ... or who else is affected by our vote.

The real value of money

2009-10-29T08:14:00.002-06:00

I am reading an interesting book at the moment called "More Sex is Safer Sex: the Unconventional Wisdom of Economics" by Steven Landsburg. Landsburg looks at a variety of different statistical situations or dilemmas and examines the economical side of them, often then offering his own take on the cost/benefit analysis and what that means the "right" answer is. It is an interesting read for a couple of reasons: one he occasionally gets sidetracked onto his own issues and beliefs (fairly conservative with a strong belief in a lack of government involvement) but also because he presents some intriguing arguments into why some people should be having more sex, or why Scrouge before he gives his money away is helping more people than after he gives it away. For someone like me with little economic background I end up mostly having to trust his economic arguments because I do not have the expertise to refute him. It is good to occasionally be forced to trust what other people are saying reather than consistently trying to assert your own opinion. I also think it is a good exercise to look for flaws based on what another person thinks and not refute them simply by saying what you think instead.

It raises an interesting question to me though ... does money really determine the value of things as much as we think it does. Landsburg is seemingly aware of outside values ... he points to the fact that a person has a child inspite of all the negative economic effects of it and in fact rejoices in the birth of the baby. He is also aware that people marry for more reasons that simply economic gain or beauty of the potential partner. I think he struggles how to fully quantify that for his analysis. For the child he is simple ignores it, focusing instead on the cost/benefit to the rest of the community, assuming that the parent is already coming out ahead. But is money really the best measure of value? Or maybe the real question are there some moral absolutes that are more superceding the econmic value of something.

One argument that Landsburg looks at is child labor in third world countries. He seems to make the point that child labor is helping the families, that no one would willing subject their child to such work unless it was the only way to make enough for the family. He feels that those of us in the first world can afford luxuries like not having our children work, but that even in our own past it was necessary for children to work, and work a lot to make enough to thrive. By prohibiting child labor we are actually further impoverishing these countries by further limiting their means of production and thus ability to get richer, like we got richer. He points to the fact as wealth increases, child labor decreases, and seems to feel this will be a self-correcting system. I mean, the arugment could be made and in some ways has been made that slavery was a response of the south to remain economically competitive with the north during th 1850s, was it wrong of people to say that work should not be done by slaves? Is it possible to take some ethical values and impoes them on an economic system, for some of us to say we do not believe such a practice is moral right and we are not willing to be a part of it. Now, Landsburg is right that if we take such a stance we need to be aware of its effects ... if we are decreasing the potential of a country in some ways maybe there are other ways we need to work to improve it. At the same time, that does not mean we should feel that a simply economic analysis tells the whole story.

What I love about Landsburg's book is that he challenges me to think and pushes me with some hard "facts" that in the end remind me, my faith is not about facts, or simply things we can measure in real world dollars or units, it is tied to something greater, it is connected to a God that goes beyond money to offer us something of real value. We as Christians are challenged to look at the world as it is, and decide what ways our faith calls us to act differently, or live differently, regardless of what the economic pressures tell us.

There is a season ...

2009-10-12T08:01:00.002-06:00

It is October 12th and I am sitting in a coffee shop watching large fluffy white flakes of snow fall on the ground. It is a beautiful picturesque scene ... other than the date on the calendar. I know from living in Minnesota most of my life that getting snow snow in October is not out of line. What is surprising to me is that the snow falling now is not the first snow. In fact it is landing in places on existing snow. We got our first snow on Friday night and somehow it is still around. I love snow, probably leftover from not making enough snow forts as a kid. Even now that snow is more of a hassle for driving and shoveling than it is something I play in I still enjoy the beauty it adds to the world. By the same token I love the cold, I find it invigorating and refreshing. Maybe my competitive nature enjoys something that challenges me, who knows, the bottom line colder whether just forces me to think harder about whether or not I should be going outside barefoot, or maybe it is time to retire the sandals for a bit. In the end I really just like winter.

So I find it odd that I am sitting here, in the middle of October loving the snow that is coming down but also feeling very much like now is not the time. I really feel like we missed the fall up here. Some of it was that I was gone for a week to the South and while I was gone the temp went from the 70s to the 50s and now into the 30s and 40s. Even adding that week into the occasion we really did not have a fall around here. Trees still have their leaves, many of them have not even fully turned yet. As much as I love the weather that winter brings, even I think there is a time for everything, and I am struggling to feel like now is the time for snow, now is the time for winter to start. I think we all need our rhythms, Ecclesiastes really does understand it, there is a time for everything. I guess my question is whether now is really the time for snow.

Vacation

2009-10-06T07:46:00.002-06:00

I was able to travel to South Carolina last week for a much needed vacation. It was also the kind of vacation I needed, one with few schedules or expectations, but instead filled with rest and relaxation. It was a good time with family in a beautiful rented condo by the ocean.

While there were a lot of things to enjoy during the week, perhaps one of the ones I enjoyed most was swimming in the ocean. In particular on our last day there the waves were finally reaching a decent height. Having little experience with the ocean I have not sense of what is normal or not, but I do know that I enjoy more waves to less, and these waves where finally getting to a size that was appealing to me. As the waves grew in size they began to provide a humbling reminder to me. Between my height and weight, I am a big guy, but those waves reminded me of something, in the grand scheme of things I am rather little.

The lectionary text for the month is Job, and I am reminded of God, speaking to Job from the whirlwind, reminded Job just how human he is, and just what that means in the grand scheme of creation. I think it is easy to forget this. To get the South Carolina I flew in a plane that soared through the sky at close to 500 mph. I saw an aircraft carrier and a submarine, reminders of how we seek to be masters of land, sea, and sky. We can do so much as humans that it is easy to lose our place, lose our perspective. Standing in the ocean, being pushed around by the never ending line of waves, I was reminded just how small we all are. For someone like me that was a good thing, it is good to remember our place in the world, one of God's children, but just one, and just a child of God.

Modern Day Morality

2009-09-17T08:53:00.002-06:00

I remember seeing disclaimers on books that informed me that if the book had been sold without its cover that it was a pirated book and the author and publisher had not received a share of the profits. I never saw a pirated book and so I always have wondered how prolific the pirated book trade really is, outside of college campuses where the work is done with copiers and not the actual book. Still the image of a torn book helps make it fairly revealing that the book is stolen, a violated product.

The same is not true with so many stolen items today, but in particular I am thinking of online products. Computer piracy is so prevalent that the lines get blurred on what is and is not stolen, what is and is not illegal. I do not know what all the rules are for burning tracks from a CD onto a computer, when it is legal and when it is illegal, etc. Even if I did it is harder to see it as a bad thing. We do not have the torn and tattered book to remind us that the song we are listening to was gained without proper compensation. We have no tangible reminder of the damage that is caused to others. I think on the primary reasons for computer piracy is that the seemingly victimless nature of the crimes. It is hard to see how a pirated version of Windows hurts anyone, except Microsoft, and they are some big "evil" corporation. The "evil" helps to further justify the action. Or so what if some millionaire singer does not get their royalties because of the song I illegally download.

Is there a decline the morality of our nation today, or are the temptations and grey areas just more obvious than they were in the past? Is the danger of the Internet generation that separation makes it hard to remember there are people at the other end of things. Stab a person you can feel them there, shoot them you can see their face, lob a missile at them and you may not even know they are there. Grab someone's purse and you can feel their resistance, rob a store at night and you likely know the person you are stealing from, even if it was just while casing the place, hack into someone's bank account online and you likely only know their name so you can use it to further the theft. Each step away makes the victim seem less real. In our Internet age we forget about the people around them, we objectify them, and suddenly morlaity is less defined.

In the end I tend to be a relativist when it comes to morality. I know what I value as right and wrong, but I know that at least some of those values are really a personal choice and not somehting I would feel everyone has to value in the same way. At the same time I think people do need to employ a certain broarder nature to their ethics. One of Kant's principles for ethics was that any ethical stance needed to be one that a person would want universalized. So if it is ok for me to pirate stuff from Microsoft than it is ok for others to pirate my work and not pay for it. Should I publish a book at some point I would then be fine if some people copied it and I did not recieve royalties. I should be ok with the logical consequences of my actions.

I do not know if the world is truly worse than it was years ago, but I do know this, the world today would be better if we all had a better sense of ethics. The world would be better if we thought not just about what is right and good for us, but what we would want if we were on the other side of things. The world would be better if we remember the divine spark within us all.

Ignorance is (not) Bliss

2009-09-10T08:21:00.002-06:00

The first assignment I had as a soon-to-be philosophy major at Beloit was to write an essay. The question posed was whether it was better to be ignorant and happy or wise and sad. I went with ignorant and happy, because in the end, wisdom should lead towards happiness as well. If knowledge does not lead towards happiness, then it loses some of its value, at least to me. By the same token, ignorance that leaves us unhappy is bad.

Recently my wife and I took a group of youth down to the Twin Cities to work at the Fair, go to the zoo, and shop at the Mall. The less exciting part of the trip was heading to Hamline University to use their showers. What we had neglected to mention to people, or have people plan for was that the showers not private stalls. All of the youth were wonderfully mature and handled it well. Afterwards my wife and I were talking about it, and both of us realized that we assumed that showering under such circumstances was easier for teens of the opposite gender. Neither of us had solid reasons we could point to, but both of us, in our ignorance assumed that the awkwardness that we remembered and encountered was somehow less for the other side.

I find this to be a great example of how our ignorance did not create bliss, but in fact probably only worsened things. When it comes to things like, shame, one of the main things that feeds it is the assumption that we are less for feeling it. If we all have the assumption that we are the only ones feeling awkward about something, like showering in a public locker room, then we further deepen our shame, making things all the worse.

I do not have a grand solution to the showering dilema, but I do think it raises some good questions for all of us. How many people struggle and suffer in silence on other things, believing themselves to be the only person who struggles with such problems. If we did not focus so much on our precieved weakness compared to others, maybe who would realize just how strong we really are. If only we got past our ignorance, had the courage to share with each othter, we would all realize how weak we all are, and by extension just how strong each of us truly is.

Right Mindfulness

2009-08-25T07:54:00.002-06:00

I cannot recall of the top of my head whether Right Mindfulness is a term I picked up from reading the Tao of Pooh or from Buddhism classes in college, but it seems like a particularly striking notion to me now. Not because I am finding myself in the right frame of mind, but because I am reminded time and time again that it is important. One of the great challenges of church planting ... I think more than simply being the pastor of a more established congregation is the day to day waves that shift and challenge my perspectives, my right mindfulness. One day I will feel like I am riding high, things are going well and the next I will find myself mired in the midst of challenges, faced with the overwhelming knowledge of everything that is still to be done. The challenge seems to be that everything in church planting is so fluid, or at least it feels that way. I am reminded of the line from a hymn "on Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand." While I try to live that out in some ways I feel Christ is not the rock on which I stand, but the lighthouse that I orient myself towards in the midst of a storm. Though the waves go up and down, I face towards Christ ... that is the right mindfulness that I seek.

Cleaning House

2009-08-06T08:18:00.002-06:00

When I was a kid I was terrible at doing my chores around the house ...
ok ... full disclosure, I am still terrible about doing my chores around the house. When company is coming, or my wife is coming home from a long trip I can find the drive and the energy to get the work done, but day to day stuff is not my strong suit. When I was a kid though I never minded helping clean other places, whether it was doing stuff at school or at a friend's house.

I feel like we see the same thing when it comes to church work. People will drive hundreds of miles to do a mission trip but will not want to help people in their own backyards. Every year Park UMC struggles to get their members to work at their booth at the Crow Wing County Fair. Every year Hamline UMC struggles to get member to work at the MN State Fair. However without really trying my wife and have managed to find 20+ youth from Light of the Lakes and Grace, two smaller churches who are willing to go to the Cities to help out.

I guess it makes sense ... no one likes to do the work they HAVE to do ... we like the freedom to choose what we do, even it is the same kind of work we resist doing. I suppose this is why the maverick heros are so popular. Maybe this is why so many people struggle with faith. One of the key steps in the 12 step program is accepting a higher power. An implication to that can mean accepting that there are things we have to do because of that higher power. A relationship with God seems to imply things we have to do. What we really need to do is find a relationship filled with things we want to do. We need to remind people that a relationship with God is not about subservance but joyful service. Now if only I could think joyful about the dishes at home with my name on them or the jungle ... I mean lawn that surrounds my house.

Starting a new appointment

2009-06-29T08:30:00.002-06:00

Before anyone who reads this gets confused, no, I am not being reappointed, it just feels like it. Right now I am stuck in the middle of changing two jobs at once. My role at Light of the Lakes has been switching from pastor to church planter. With this switch suddenly my hours are less concerned with sermon and worship prep and instead are focused on how I can reach out and meet new people and working with my launch team to make things happen. Basically one of the main goals to get out of the office and out of my comfort zone and to do more things in the community. Unfortunately that is running counter with my other "new" appointment, which is the temporary "sole" pastor at Park. With Rory on sabbatical in Australia I get the joy of providing the pastor care and limited leadership for all of Park's members. This means I also have increased pressure to be in the office at the same time, since that is a great way to keep a pulse on the congregation. All of this combines to really feel in some ways like a new appointment. I am having to rethink how I structure my work week. I am learning and being reminded of different things I need to make sure get done and I am taking on a whole host of new responsibilities. The bonus though is that I don't have to move to get all of this. It reminds me of those first few days a year ago when I sat in the office and tried to figure out what in the world I was supposed to be doing as a pastor. Three years later the feeling is still the same. It is kinda nice that ministry remains fresh, new and interesting.

NYC

2009-06-22T08:24:00.002-06:00

I had the chance on my recent vacation to see New York City. This was my first time seeing the Big Apple and was excited to see what all the fuss was about. Having lived in Chicago for a couple of years I was not exactly a small town kid coming to the big city for the first time. Still even my experiences in Chicago did not fully prepare me for the mass of humanity that is NYC.

I think the thing I struggle with in NY is really the lack of private space, the notion that almost everyone shares some space with someone else, often a lot of someones. Having spent most of my life in a quiet suburb I am not used to having to share so much space. The fact that cost of living forces people into tiny spaces and economic realities emphasize the importance of sharing that space is just foreign to me.

Not only is living space shared, but so to is open space. Central Park becomes the space to get away from cramped living conditions, as long as you are willing to share it with thousands of other people. What is most unnerving to me about all of this is the way it leads to dehumanizing those around us. I walk around Brainerd/Baxter and expect to met someone I know. With so many people around in NY you begin to not care who is around. It is hard to care about and give care to people in need because you see so many. The result seems not to be to help open our eyes to the needs of those around us, but in fact force us to close our eyes, because we just get used to it.

I only have my limited experiences living in Chicago, the Twin Cities, and visiting NYC, but I wonder if the number of people around us changes how we think about people. Do we have a limited capacity to care? Are we limited in how many people we can recognize as individuals and not just another person, part of the mass of humanity and so ironically less human to us? Is the benefit of a small community not just the quieter way of life but the benefit that we can keep seeing people as people. We have the space to be ourselves and to let other people be themselves and see everyone around us as being human.

Just my musings for the moment.

The point of debate

2009-06-01T08:23:00.003-06:00

Garrison Keeler, in "A Prairie Home Companion" jokingly talked about a Lutheran Synod meeting where people stood up and said the same things they had been saying to each other for 15 years and neither side changing their minds. Today I read in Star Tribune that often appeals courts, such as the Minnesota Supreme Court have often made up their minds on cases based on the briefs put before them before oral arguments begin and that oral arguments often do little to change people's minds about things. This certainly resonates with my own experiences of debates in student government and also my own personal experiences in matters of faith I have been involved in where it rarely mattered what was said since both sides had already dug in on their side of the issue.

So the question that I am musing on today is, if debate does not seem to really make a difference, why do we value it so much? Why do we spend so much time in structured arguments if they so rarely result in a change in opinion. Is it all about posturing for the future? Do we just hold out the hope that hearts/minds will change? Or is it just important that everyone have the chance to have their say, even if it likely won't matter? Maybe it really tells us that we all need to be more open minded when we enter into these conversations. In the end I think it is telling that often we value people saying what they think rather than valuing listening to them, or having the conversation make a difference outside the debate.

The Learning Curve

2009-05-04T08:23:00.002-06:00

I was at a training event for Rethink Church this weekend and one of the other learners at the event raised the question/concern that just as churches are getting the hang of websites we have Facebook and that is followed quickly by Twitter and who knows what is next. It is hard to stay on top of the new technologies and possibilities for ministry. Only having been in the ministry for the least 3 years I can only imagine what is like for people who have been doing it for a lot longer. The impression that I have gotten is that the changes in how technology aids ministry have increased, with notably fewer changes in the 80's than the 90's and even more changes in this decade than the 90's which brought the advent of email and websites, though churches often took their time getting on board with both of those.

One of the biggest challenges I think for the church is that our learning practices are not built for this sort of rapid learning. Churches, like many other institutions are generally adverse to change. Often it takes pressure from leadership and official workshops and mandates to get people to take seriously the need to do something new, like have a website, or a Facebook presence. The problem is that by the time our leadership has seen the need and figured out how to train for it, it is really too late. We often use the language of people being life-long learners. What I always think of when I hear this is taking classes, doing workshops, engaging in formal opportunities to expand my knowledge. Institutions across professions encourgage this by rewarding and often requiring continuing education credits. Unfortuntely the kind of education we really need is something that we cannot get credit for. I am not aware of a formal system to get credit for learning how to use Twitter and researching what churches and other groups are using it for. The classes on things like that happen in conversations with other clergy struggling with the same questions. They happen on message boards and blogs, as groups of people talk about success and analysize failures.

Life-long learner is good. It is good from a practical standpoint and it is what we are meant to do spiritually. At the same time maybe what we need more of is an attitude of life-long experimentation and collaboaration. Light of the Lakes is in the midst of doing something different. We are not the first church to do it, but we are certainly one of the first. We are in a position to try new things and look at things in different ways. For the church to do the best it can to be the Church, we need to keep that attitude of holy experimentation, to not limit ourselves to what has been done and what is proven to work but instead to free us up for trying new things, to work together and fail together, and to share what we learn in that to help the Church grow and reach new people. Because that is really why we are called to learn, collaborate, and experiment, to fullfill our great commission, not our continuing education requirement.

Religion

2009-04-27T08:18:00.002-06:00

I had the pleasure of being a part of an informational session/conversation on Thursday about Islam. In addition to deepening my understanding of the faith I was reminded me of the things I should have learned in World Religions class if I had been more awake or done more of the readings. Not only that, I also gained an interesting insight about my own faith and chosen religion. The presenter started by asking the question of what a religion was. The purpose of this was to highlight the understanding of the Islamic faith, specifically that Islam is not just about what you believe but is also a product of how you live that faith/belief.

This to me is a great way of looking at Christianity and what we should be emphasizing as well. I do not know enough about other faith traditions, in particular to comment on how well they put their understanding of living out faith into practice, but my experience of Christianity is that end up concerning ourselves too often with orthodoxy (correct thinking) instead of orthopraxy (correct practice). Denominations and individuals fall into the trap of arguing about how the Bible is meant to be understood, read, or what exactly it means. We split hairs, parse out meaning and ultimately do little more than dig ourselves deeper into theological trenches. My worry is simply shifting the conversation to orthopraxy does not fix it. I fear that all that will do is turn the philosphical, analytic cannons of our faith on a new target. Instead of arguing about issues of theology we will end up arguing if using a reusable bag at the grocery store is really a way to live out our faith.

Ulimately it seems to me that problem is not the Doxy or the Praxy, but the Ortho that goes before it. If we stop worrying about getting it exactly right we will have a lot more room for belief and from belief will come action. Religion gets reduced and codify, so we can say if someone is Christian, or Muslim, or Hindu, and know what it means. Instead we should worry more about how people of all faiths live them out in the world. None of this is to say I don't have a sense of both a correct orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Afterall, I need something I think is right in order for me to act, but it is not productive to simply worry about getting everything right, because I will never achieve that. At some point we need to go out and try this whole faith thing out, see what it is like to live our faith in the real world and let our faith define who we are, not just in terms of believe but in terms of action, then we really will be religious.

The Fencing Head Game and the Church

2009-04-13T08:26:00.002-06:00

One of the challenges of fencing, as with many sporting competitions is the head game. An athlete can be physical superior to another, but a bad case of nerves, or a poor outlook and things can go bad quickly. For me the hardest part of the head game was the constant comparison with other fencers. In most fencing competitions everyone warms up and gets ready to fence in the same gym they are going to compete in and so it is easy to start the comparisons between athletes before the fencing tournament has even begun. I for one was especially prone to watching others warm up and as I got better and better looking around for the biggest challenges in the room. Rather than looking for helpful tips to fence them, or preparing myself mentally I tended mostly to sort people into two categories, people I thought I could/should beat and those I thought would beat me. The end result was that I was never really sure my head was in the right place when I would start a bout because I was more worried about the expected result than working on making my own desired result.

Today as I was getting my chai and sitting down to think about church business I got caught in the same sort of head game. I overheard a couple of other people in the coffee shop discussing their church and when they added on the chapel and the coffee shop and how many services one of the other congregations in the area had moved to. It was easy to fall into the trap of comparison, competition, and the ineveitable feeling of failure by contrast. For whatever reason it is easy to start treating congregations and churches like competitions, constantly evaluating who is doing well (usually someone else) and what we could be doing better. Certainly some of that is human nature, or at least natural for a lot of us. The effect however is the same, instead of looking at the success of other conregations as a sign of God's work in the area we fall into the trap of feeling they are stealing our members, or the potential members we want.

In the end I end up being of two minds on this. On the one hand, I know that I am not meant to compete with the other churches since we are all on the same side. On the other hand, if I feel called to do the best job I can for the church, some of doing that requires me to be able to judge what sort of job I am doing, and a good measure of that is how well other churches do as a comparison. Maybe the solution is to spend some time with a sports psychologist and get my head straightened out so I can get back in the game and do better. Or maybe I just need to do a better job of letting go of my competive rivalry and trust the prompting of the spirit to tell me when I could be doing more. I guess I could also try and not think of everything in terms of how it relates to fencing, but I know that is not the answer so I will have to keep thinking and musing.

The Radical Root

2009-04-06T08:44:00.002-06:00

Last Tuesday in a meeting I had the opportunity to observe one of many amusing and yet perhaps very telling quirks of the English language. As a part of a conversation of how to move forward as a congregation someone observed that what was needed was something radical, they also agreed that what we needed to do was get back to the root of what we had been doing. Now at face value this can almost seem a little contradictory, I mean we tend to think of something radical as far out and different and the root as sort of getting back to the basics. The amusing part of course is the fact that they really mean the same thing. In mathematics, a radical is the square root of something. To be radical is to go back to our roots.

One of the challenges in our world seems to be this tendency to bury and forget about the root. Instead we focus on the huge plant that springs forth from it. The root, the base, the foundation is lost in the midst of the edifice around it. In the end going back to the root, back the base, to what everything is built on is something radical, something exceptional.

Maybe Jesus was a radical because he did just that, point us back to the root, to God. He did not get caught up in the legalisms of the day, but went back to the root, to something truly radical. have we in the church gotten caught in the legalism, the bureaucracy, the edifice that is the Church and forgotten the root? It is a serious question, one that countless others have raised and hopefully many churches and even denominations are considering. As the United Methodist Church begins its campaign to rethink church maybe we need to rethink church mathematical, and find that radical root that got us started, that careful harmony that John Wesley had between personal piety and social action. Or go even further back, to that life with Christ, that reminder that Christ is meant to be the center of what we do, of who we are.

Maybe it is stretching the mathematical imagery further than it should be taken, but I see a striking difference between the search for the radical root and fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is based on around certain core principles, getting back to the basics, and yet fundamentalism stops short of getting to that radical root. It stops with whole numbers, easy integers. Getting to the radical root goes a step further, if you keep taking the root of an integer eventually you get to one whose root is no longer rational, but irrational. The root of 81 is 9, the root of 9 is 3, but the root of 3 cannot be expressed with integers, it is irrational. To me that seems that when you get to the root of Christ, you are looking at that irrational number, the square root of 3, inexpressible with simply integers, irrational. Christ is the quintessential irrational, 3=1, the square root of 3. What is really radical about root is in the end we recognize that at the source of the church is something highly irrational, our root cannot be defined in simple integers, a God who will walk among us as a man, will die for us, and will free us all from the power of death. The to me is the radical root.

The heart of USA

2009-03-30T10:04:00.003-06:00

Today a lot of news coverage is being given to the auto industry. President Obama has been emphasizing the need to continue to support this crucial industry to the US. One of his claims and one of others as well is that the auto industry is an important symbol of capitalism and of our country. On the one hand the auto industry has done a lot to transform the middle class, build up our country and to transform the way we live and travel. While I agree there will be economic ramifications if the industry fails I do not think it is as essential to what it means to be American as we are sometimes led to believe. I really question if making cars and in turn making money is really what the US is all about. Certainly part of what has made this country the great melting pot is people seeking a better life, seeking their fortune. This country was also founded by and continues to be infused with people seeking a freer life, a life where they can just be. Some of that freedom is economic freedom but it is also religious and political freedom.

Is capitialism and industry what makes this country great, or is it something more. Is capitialism simply a means to an end or has it become and end in and of itself? Now maybe more so than ever we have a chance to make a statement about what is really important to this country. Many people are concerned, and probably legitmately so about the increased government control of different industries, especially the financial sector. They worry that we are sliding slowly towards communism or socialism. Whether or not that is true I would raise this question, has our capitialistic system with its emphasis on the bottom line and making as much money as possible really faired better? I mean, financial institutions of all sorts have shown a clear desire and emphasis on how much money they can make for their shareholders, but they have done so at the expense of our communities. Homes lie empty because of poor lending practices and taxpayers are paying the price in the form of bailouts and other financial reprecutions.

I am not saying cut the auto industry lose, or let the banks fail, nor am I saying that we need the government to step in and make changes, what I am saying that we as citizens need to remember that money is not everything, that what makes this country, or any country great is something more. In the end, we are the shareholders, we, or people like us are the ones these companies are trying to make money for. If we take seriously shifting our priorities we can make a difference. We can send a message that capitialism is not the end, but simply a means to something great, something that makes this country great, freedom.

Regular worship?

2009-03-23T10:08:00.002-06:00

Two interesting pieces of information have come to my attention in the last couple of months and I am finally at a point where I want to blog about them. Recently I learned that collective worship attendance in the US is down and yet at the same time participation is up. It seems to be one more piece of information that confirms the theory that people are looking for something more than worship in their church connection. The supporting piece of information and yet fascinating bit to me is the demographic information I found for Baxter, that 18% of the people say their faith is really important to them, that 41% identify as Conservative Evangelical Christian and 17% consider it important to attend religious services. 48% of the population considers it self to be spiritual, which is good to know but at the same two of those numbers really jump out at me, especially in comparison to the others. I would say a strong faith i a key attribute of a person who identifies as a conservative evangelical Christian, after all, the whole notion of these group of people is that they vote their faith. yet at best about 40% of the of CEC's consider their faith is really important to them, and that is assuming that no one else does, which we know is not true. Equally surprising to me is the fact that a similar percentage at best consider it important to attend religious services. Given those numbers it is no wonder that worship attendance is on the decline.

What does this mean for those of us in the business? Do we simply disregard the census data? Do we brush it off by saying that the terminology confuses people ... they may not think of worship as being the same as a religious service. If the data is accurate what does this really say about the population ... which is about on par with the rest of the country. I would believe that only 17% of the country is in worship on a given week but part of me hopes at least another 10% is feeling guilty about not being there and believes that religious services are still important to be at.

Coupled with all of this is really a central question to me ... are pastors like me right in our belief that worship is a good thing and a key aspect of growing in faith AND if that is true, what do we do to start changing that perception in the rest of the community. What have we been doing wrong that the demographic polling data has shown such a shift in public perception. What do we need to do to make worship something that people miss, something that people believe is valuable to their life. The other possibility is to take seriously the Wesleyan notion of taking God to the people. If worship is only important for 17% of the population and even 40% of Christians what are we doing to reach the other 83%, the other 60%. How do we help people answer yes to faith being important in their lives? How do we help people answer yes to being spiritual, yes to the belief that worship is important ... even if they are too busy with hockey this week to go.

Ahh to Be Old ...

2009-03-17T07:07:00.002-06:00

Now I am well aware that at the tender age of 28 I am only old to kids ... some of whom think I am 99, or at least older than their parents, but to the rest of the world I am still young. So today, basking in my youngness I will pause for a minute to look forward to a privilege that seems to come with age ... telling the younger generation what is good for them and what is not. To me perhaps the quintessential example of that right now is Internet social networking. Time and time again I hear people dismissing Facebook and Twitter as ways to waste time and things that act as substitutes for real friends and real relationships. Internet dating and sites like eHarmony and Match.com are often looked down upon as ways to meet a person. Now, I have seen the negative powers of the Internet, the ways it can waste time, the ways that it can hinder rather than enhance communication, however there are benefits to it to and it oftens seems like there is a cadre of older people who are quick to point out the faults and not the benefits. The reality seems to be that as the world and society change, generations have different ways of doing things and the hardest thing is to step into another person's shoes and see it their way. I read an article recently that talke about the need for face-to-face human interaction and that hinted that things like Facebook hindered that. On the one hand, I would agree, simply spending all your time online instead of going out and seeing people is a bad thing, however I don't think that Facebook is meant to be designed as deliberate substitute for face time, it is there because face time is impossible. Last night I posted on Facebook that I was not happy about how my previous week had gone. In the course of an hour I had recieved to affirming comments, from my wife's cousin and from a high school best friend's sister. Now, I have people who are immediately supportive in my life, such as my wife, close friends, etc, but it was nice to have two people I would probably never talk to about something be supportive, it was nice to have more connections. So what is the point of all this ... it is not simply to try and show how great social networking sites are and how right my generation is as compared to previous generations ... I mean both of those go without saying! What it reminds me of is the value of perspective and in particular multiple perspectives. Differing generational views can increase the wisdom of everyone, older people can gain some perspective by hearing from younger peole how new technology is helping relationships and increasing connections. Younger people can learn from older people about how society used to create those connections in different ways. It is easy to get stuck in the unintentional rut of thinking our way is the best way, that we have to be doing it right because that is the way we are doing. Other people can give us perspective from outside the rut and can sometimes see the pitfalls in the rut. The challenge is for everyone to realize that we do not know it all, that we are not completely right on something and to continue to value the different views of others, knowing that their critics increase our understanding of the situation, just as we can help increase theirs. That being said, I still look forward to being older when I can sit in judgement on those younger than me and the foolish ways they live their lives.

Rethink church?

2009-03-09T09:44:00.002-06:00

The United Methodist Church is launching a campaign to rethink church. At the same time my own congregation is in a position where it needs to rethink what our church is called to be. In the process of all this thinking I talked to one of my members who was working at a Bridal Fair over the weekend. In talking with her it occurred to me that part of rethinking church is thinking about where the church is present and where it is not present and if some of that is what needs to change. One of the things that I realized is that places like wedding fairs are somewhere churches really could and arguably should be. We should be there not because weddings are a big business for churches but because a wedding is a time where people should be thinking about church and we do not help them any if we are not present.

Where do people expect the church to be?

Where do people need the church to be?

I read an interesting article which talked about the decline in worship attendance in the US but commented at the same time that church participation is up. Worship is not the end-all-be-all for the church. As we are rethinking church some of the question is not just where, but what. What does the church need to be doing today to continue to meet the spiritual needs of the society AND to continue to serve as a prophetic voice to society. How do find new places to be the church and new ways to do church. Maybe the hardest question of all is how do we do this without creating a disconnect for the people already in church, who are happy with how church already is.

Should we care?

2009-03-02T10:39:00.002-06:00

I read an article in the Star Tribune that talked about the effect that FBI spies/informants were having on the atmosphere at mosques around the country. The article said that many Muslims who were just looking for a place to pray were avoiding mosques and that mosques in turn were being more carefully with who they asked to speak or how political they would let a message be. What struck me the most was a comment someone made. They implied that since everyone was welcome in a church that this would include FBI agents and that all a church did was preach the word of God so it had nothing to fear. The reader's comment raises the age old question, does an innocent person have anything to fear from the law?

As a pastor and therefore one of the "gatekeepers" of how welcoming a church is I struggle with government spying on people in church. There is something sacred about places of worship, whether Christian, Muslims, or whatever. To enter into such a space with deceptive purposes to me is disrespectful to that faith and the sacred atmosphere it is seeking to create. The counter to such an argument however is IF someone is using a church/mosque/synagogue for a political agenda, then they have violated the space already and so the FBI is not the one to blame. That only leads to the old "he started it" playground argument. Regardless of who is to blame, the net result of taking the "war on terror" onto sacred ground is that the sacred ground is one more place that will end up scorched. One of the most egregious and horrific acts of the Civil Rights Movement was the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL in which four girls were killed while attending Sunday school. When we make sacred places part of the battle zone then everyone loses. I believe that the government is called to take a higher road than the criminals are. We do not let our policemen shoot an unarmed person just because the criminals might do the same thing. We cannot lower ourselves to the level of others. The principals of liberty and freedom should still have value in this country.

So how would I feel about an FBI agent spying on my church. First of all I do not think that churches are as innocent or maybe should be as innocent as people make it seem. Abortion clinic bombings are almost always carried out by Christians. It seems likely that some of these bombers might have gotten inspiration/encouragement in their beliefs even if they were never told in church to do it. Should churches be so proud that we do not do anything that is against the law? Shouldn't we actually feel like the church is a safe place to say when we disagree with the law and government? If I knew the government was monitoring what I said on Sunday I would probably rethink some of my sermons, try and reword some of my messages. If we had a perfect government and a perfect justice system maybe I would not be as worried, but the abundance of innocent people in prison and the reality of the witch hunts our government has undertaken looking for communists and terrorists makes me feel we are far from perfect.

The bottom line to me is this, if the government really is about respecting the free practice of religion I believe we need to mak efforts to allow space that is without government incursion for the practice of such religion. One could point to prohibitions around drugs in religious ceremonies, governmental regulations around marriage, and all sorts of other laws as a reminder that we do not really give people unfettered religious freedom, but even if some of thoes laws are justified, spying and deception to me undermine too much this basic right of our country, that we are free to gather and worship as we choose, without fear of the government watching us and monitoring us. At least that is the way I see it right now.

Didn't You Eat On Tuesday

2009-02-25T11:26:00.002-06:00

As I was growing up my parents were big fans of Charlie King, one of the songs I remember was a tongue and check song called "Didn't You Eat On Tuesday." It raises good questions of the care we give to those less fortunate than most of us. As I was thinking about what I would do for Lent and Ash Wednesday I was struck by the reminder we get in the Gospel for today, that sacrifice should not be a public display but instead a private one. Thinking about this, I was not sure if I wanted to post anything today, but I have decided that my posting could be informative rather than self-promoting. I decide yesterday as I was reading about Ash Wednesday customs that I would try to fast before the soup supper this evening. Already I have had a couple of profound experiences, one is that fasting is hard when you are not awake ... it was not until I had poured a bowl of cereal this morning that I remember I was not going to eat, so I set that aside. I also realized how attached I have gotten to food. Since going without breakfast is a pain, and as lunch approaches I am constantly distracted by my body's cries for food. I think this is a good thing because it reminds me of the suffering that others endure. I will not change the world by not eating today but it reminds me what others go through on a regular basis. My suffering does not glorify me, it glorifies all those who endure this all the time. As an individual largely born into privilege, a male middle-class WASP through and through, I sometimes forget how different the experiences of others are. As Lent begins we often give things up, take on spiritual devotions to help better ourselves. My personal challenge for Lent is to try and use it as a time to reflect on the needs of others. Hopefully I gain some personal insights, but I want to also remember the suffering of others and make sure my sacrfices do more than just help diminish my waist line a bit.

Love of the World

2009-02-23T11:29:00.002-06:00

Long ago, at least it seems a long time ago, I decided my theme for Lent would be Love, I would move in concentric circles inwards, starting with Love of the World and ending with Love of Self and ultimately Love of God, which is both the most inwards and most outwards circle. This means that on Sunday I will be talking about the love of the world and how that relates to our lives as Christians.

As I am sitting here in a coffee shop thinking about this one of things I see is a sign by the restrooms that reads "support our local economy" with a web address encouraging people to buy local. I am always concerned about the tension between thinking global and yet also working locally. The two do not need to be exclusive but unless wrapped up in something larger I think they easily can be. One example that comes to mind for me is the question of Buy American, do we spend our money supporting local workers and in turn not helping out foreign producers? If this is done for the sake of making sure we are better off financially and to improve our own standing that is worrying to me, because the motive really becomes one of greed. On the other hand, one reason to support local efforts is the poor labor conditions/standards in foreign countries. Buying products from countries with a good record of supporting the workers can be a good reason to buy American instead of from say China. The same to me is true of an effort to buy local, if we are buying local just to support the people we know instead of the people we do not know, I feel we are ignoring the needs of others and privileging those around us simply because of proximity. Conversely buying local as an environmental effort to support less trucking/shipping costs and the resulting pollution is a good thing.

What it comes down, in my opinion is making sure we are thinking global for the right reasons, understanding that a love of world is a love of all people everywhere, and literally a love of the whole planet. We cannot talk about love in a more local sense until we ground it in that. Things like buying local are important, but only as long as they are not grounded in regionalism and nationalism, issues of false pride, and instead are about building a better more sustainable future for everyone, for the whole world. Well, that is a start to what I am thinking/wrestling with today.

2021 and Beyond!

2009-02-18T11:10:00.002-06:00

For many athletes today, the year 2012 and London are synonymous, 2012 being the next Summer Olympics year and London being the venue for that quadrennial competition. I know one fencer seriously training for the event and know one of the national coaches who is also working with fencers to get them ready for that year. As exciting as it would be to dream about what could be glory I could achieve in fencing in the Olympics, I have a humbler goal and a more distant year 2021, that is the year that I become old enough to compete again in age-oriented fencing tournaments. Fencers under 20 compete in Junior tournaments and once you pass 20 you must compete in open events with everyone else, until you reach 40 and suddenly there are "Veteran" events for you. I have compete occasionally and not very successfully in national level tournaments and appreciate that with my life choices, (marriage, being a pastor, serving a church 130 miles from a fencing club), there is little hope for me to ever achieve much glory on the national stage in open tournaments ... but Veterans, that could be a total different story. For that reason I am setting my sights on 2021 and starting to think about what goals I have to be ready for my "rookie" year. It is an interesting process for because it requires so much long range thinking/planning/training, something I am not used to. Still I like the exercise. Whether it is because of our constant expectation of the return of Christ, or just the daily grind of ministry, pastors and churches do not seem to do a good job of looking ahead, of setting large long term goals. The one exception I can think of right now is the 2020 goal to eliminate poverty that we have in Minnesota and that the UMC is on board with. It is good to look far down the road, to plan for the distant future as well. Certainly things will change, long range planning in the early 90's would not have seen the dot-com boom/bust or probably 9/11 and its effects but still it helps to have long range goals, because those can be big. We cannot eliminate poverty in MN in a year, we cannot reduce/eliminate malaria, and I certainly cannot get in shape/practice enough to be competitive at a high level in fencing in a short time, but if we think long term we can dream big, and make the plans to make thos dreams a reality. That is why I am thinking of 2021 and beyond.

"I have become all things to all people"

2009-02-09T10:47:00.003-06:00

I preached this week on the lectionary text from First Corinthians this week (9:16-26). I love the text for a variety of reasons but as it was still rolling around in my head this morning something occurred to me, I probably would not have liked Paul in real life. There is something about his tone that I think would have just annoyed me too much. At least in this chapter he comes across as supremely arrogant to me. His staunch claims of needing no reward and must preach the gospel out of compunction seems to demeen anyone who behaves differently. And then there are his brazenly politicing with regards to the gospel. Paul is willing to play whatever part is needed in order to spread the gospel. I both love and hate this idea. On the one hand I think that a lot of great progess has been made for the church at times when it realized that it needed to do something different in order to reach people. The church has often failed the most when it takes on a come to us, be like us attitude, rather than a willingness to realize that some people do not like what they see and do not want to god where they see the church. My wife watches a show on TLC that gives fashion tips to those who really need it. Still the way that this advice is given is not always in the most loving of ways. What occurs is really closer to an intervention and the end result is that almost everyone on the shows comes out looking about the same, they look good, but they look about the same. Is that what we want in the church? Is that what Paul wanted?

Some of what is not clear in this text is what Paul means when he claims to be all things to all people. Is he making a claim to do the ultimate bait-and-switch, that he lures Jews in with the understanding of law only to tell them their is no law, and lures Gentiles in the same way but reversed? Or is Paul instead emphasizing an understanding of Christ as being under the law to Jews and Christ being beyond the law to Gentiles? Is he meeting them in the middle or suckering them over to his side? I kind hope it is the first but something about his tone makes me think the second. Paul makes a third claim as well, to the weak he becomes weak in order to win more over to the gospel. Up until now Paul has operated with a dichotmy, playing both sides, but Paul makes no mention of becoming strong to win over the strong. What goes without saying in this text is that Paul considers himself strong, and needs to make no efforts towards that particular group. He may be one of the most successful church planters ever, but he just is so insufferable at times that I struggle to find the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in his almost self-congratulatory claims. Paul maybe the reason a lot of people have found the gospel, but I would be willing to bet he is also the reason a number of people have not found the gospel.

I was reading in Time today about a war being fought on the buses of London, it was started first by atheist but the battle was quickly joined by Christians of a variety of persuasions. Both sides were buying ad space on the buses to spread their religious or anti-religious messages. The one that caught my eye was one done by a Christian group that quoted Psalm 14, that fool says in their heart they do not believe in God. The not so subtle implication of course being that all these atheists and their billboards were fools. Ignoring the logical fallicy of such a claim, to me it was a bad thing because it did not reach out to those doubting or question God, but instead brushed them aside, mocked them, questioned them. In addition to being an incorrect assessment of the "if then" proposition to was also an ad hominen argument, assailing not the ideas of the person but instead calling into question who they were. It was one more strong arm tactic of a self-assured Christian.

The final blow, or final tipping point for me in all of this came when I heard on the radio today someone bemoaning that Obama was looking weak in seeking compromise compared to the GOP and their tactics. I would actually agree to some extent, but what I actually object to is this constant belief that compromise is weak, and really that weak is bad. Paul seemed to think it was that way, needing to reach the weak but still asserting his own strength, his own ultimate ability to be everything for everyone. I guess where I keep finding myself going in all of this is, is there a place for a weak evangelist, someone who reaches out, not in the strength of their own truth, but instead in the weakness of wanting to seek also, and how does one do so effectively? Can someone with some certainty earnestly seek along those without certainty? Is it weakness to acknowledge that my own understandings might be wrong? Is that sort of weakness a bad thing? Not sure where this has gone, how comprehensible it was, or where it leads to, so if you have made it this far and feel your time has been wasted, I offer you a full refund. Have a nice day.

Being a little brother

2009-02-03T12:20:00.002-06:00

It took me almost 28 years but I finally got the chance to feel like a little brother. Ok, I am probably exaggerating a bit, especially given how little I recall of the first few years of my life, but recently I got another chance to feel like the little brother, the first in a while. I am less than a year and a half younger than my older brother, Jonathan, so for most of our childhood I do not remember having the problem of always trying to play catch-up. We did a lot together but for the most part I found a way to be competive with him. The "friendly" competition between Jonathan and I has had some interesting side effects. In high school while he was doing cross-country skiing I was doing fencing, so we did not have a good basis for comparison, but in college when I managed to outski Jonathan he turned around and upped the ante by running a marathon. Not to be outdone, this last year I responded to challenge and ran a marathon with him. Of course we were not "racing" but I would point out that I finished before him, though there was a stretch where I was walking on Summit Ave wondering if I could start running again if he passed me. Anyway, like I said, for the most part when we compete it is on a fairly even playing field.

So a couple of Saturdays ago, despite the negative temps and even worse windchills my brother and I went skiing at Como Park. Finally I got the chance to feel like a real little brother, always pushing just to catch up with my big brother who was always a hill or a turn ahead of me. Just as a side note, Como is a terrible place to play catch-up. The trails make good use of the space, doubling back and forth to give you lots of skiing, but it means you always think you are close until you realize that the person is actually way ahead of you and it is just that the trail doubles back. So all of this to say that it was interesting, fun, and furstrating to be playing catch-up. It gave me something to push for. When you are head it is easy to pace yourself based on the people behind you, just working to stay head of them, but when you are behind you have someone pushing you to faster than you want. I like that kind of competition. I once hiked up a part of a mountain with my cousin, maintaining a remarkable pace through out it because neither of us wanted to be the one to slow down.

As I raced to keep up with my big brother I appreciated what healthy competition can do to keep us motivated. Being behind my brother encourages me to work harder so that next time things are closer. Being behind is something we tend to look down on. In the US we take pride in the fact that we are #1 and we work hard to stay #1, but we do not work nearly as hard as maybe we would if were #2 and trying to keep up with #1. Sometimes it helps to have that person ahead of us that makes us work a little harder. The impressive and stunning plays at the end of the Super Bowl were not made by the team that was ahead, playing to keep their lead, but by the team behind, trying desperately to take the lead. Maybe it is better in some ways to be #2 instead of #1, at least that is what this little brother, this #2 child is thinking today. Plus it takes the sting off the fact that my older brother completely outskiied me

Martin Luther King Day

2009-01-19T11:07:00.002-06:00

I am a bit of a non-conformist and so some part of me rebels at the notion of honoring MLK when everyone else is doing it, not because he is not deserving of honor, but because everyone else is doing it too. At the same time MLK is definitely one of my heroes both in his actions and his thinking.

What I want to highlight today is MLK's keen insight into the state of the church and to give my own struggles and perhaps convictions with that same insight.

In his Letter from the Birmingham City Jail, King observes:

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators"' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide. and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch-defender of the status quo. Par from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are."

What I love about this quote is the accurate assessment that churches tend to be better thermometers than thermostats. However at the same time I am convicted and challenged by his assessment. King, rightly argues in his Birmingham letter that the role of the church is not to be silent on issues of justice but to stand up and fight for the rights of everyone. Where I struggle is how that need to fight balances against other needs that exist for the church. Should a church or a denomination that is struggling with growth issues or financial issues set those aside in favor of issues of justice?

Here are my two thoughts on that: 1) a church cannot help others if it cannot help itself. You would not expect a sick person to donate an organ, instead you would look to a healthy person for such a service. Churches that are struggling with declining numbers and difficult finances do not help anyone if embracing issues of justice creates further conflict for them or distracts them from the things they need to do to recover and be a health part of the Body of Christ. 2) If a church is not willing to stand up for issues of justice, what does it matter if they are healthy or not? It seems to me that justice and compassion for all is a cornerstone of the church that Christ founded, how can we call ourselves a healthy church, or really even a church if we do not concern ourselves with these issues.

Unfortunately as a pastor I can see a great many issues of justice that divide congregations: issues around sexuality, poverty, and immigration raise serious challenges and disagreements as to how we as a church are to respond. Can the resulting conflict as you try and work for justice do more harm than good? How is the church called to be a bastion of change and seek justice while also respecting its own internal differences and its own internal issues?

All that being said, I am grateful for all the work that MLK did and on this day I remember not only his work and legacy but also the work of the countless people, well-known and obscure, who helped to bring his dream closer to reality.

Playoff Fever

2009-01-05T11:04:00.002-06:00

It is playoff time in the NFL and so naturally my thoughts tend to be influenced by that. Yesterday morning however my thoughts were much more focused on my sermon and how it just did not feel like a good one. One of the first things I learned in seminary is that no matter how good or bad a sermon is, you can never know if it is going to make a big difference or not for people. That is not to say that as a pastor I do not strive to preach the best sermon I can, but I do so knowing that there are a lot of factors outside of my control (thank goodness).

Some of what made it hard for me was that my sermon was basically the first thing I did after coming back from vacation and so it did not get the full week of attention a sermon usually does. The bottom line is that it was easy to come up with excuses for why this would be an off week, but it raised the question in my mind, is it ok for a pastor to have an off week? Is it really possible to avoid it? Which brings me back to the playoffs and football. Football, like preaching has one big day, Sunday, with everything else as prep leading up to it. Football has a lot of regular season games that lead up to the playoffs. Each of these games on their own means less but combined determine a teams fate, will they make the playoffs or not. For this reason coaches often talk about the one game at a time strategy, getting their players focused and ready to play each and every game, never looking to the next week, approaching each game with the same level of passion and intensity. I feel like preaching is similar. Each week is not likely to make or break a church, though I was reminded this week by my relatives that a bad sermon really can set the wrong tone. Also in preaching there are some obvious "playoff" games, things like baptisms, confirmation, Christmas, and Easter, times where you have lots of people and often more unaffliated people than usual in the congregetion. These are really the sermons you want to come out strong on. I guess my real question is can a team, or a preacher really keep the one game at a time, every sermon is a playoff sermon, mentality up or does the mind simply adjust and still takes those less important games/sermons in a different way than the really big ones? I was hearing on the radio today about how we build up tolerances to drugs, can we do the same to that playoff style pressure, so that eventually we are just as lax as we used to be, despite our best efforts.

Maybe there is that other question, should every sermon be preached like it is a Christmas sermon? I was taught in fencing to always lunge at about 80% of my maxium range, so that I could lunge further if needed. Should I be preaching at 80% so I can preach better if needed? Does preaching at less than 100% do the congregation a disservice or does it keep me from burnout and from my 100% being closer to what was once 80%. Just some thoughts.

The Merits of Being a Good Slacker

2008-12-15T11:04:00.002-06:00

I believe it was Martin Luther King who said "all that it takes for evil to flourish is for good to do nothing." Yesterday afternoon I really struggled with the whole notion of doing nothing. By the time I got home from church the snow was basically scrapping the bottom of my poor little Prius and it was clear that we would not be going out gain until the plows came through. On the one hand this was perfect, the Vikings were playing a late football game and Marianne and I had been meaning to finish decorating our tree for two weeks. Now we finally had time on Sunday to do everything we needed to do. Yet inspite of this it was hard to escape a feeling of guilt at sitting there and doing nothing. As 5 pm rolled around, the time for our evening worship service, I found myself second guessing myself on calling it off. Rationally it was easy to point to the snow which had only recently paused in its falling, and the rapidly dropping temperatures as good reasons NOT to have worship that evening, but still there was part of me that felt the church should be open, worship should be happening, just in case somebody wanted to come.

I think pastors are one of many people who struggle with doing nothing. I think we struggle with the doing nothing because we have a feeling there is always something we could be doing. Even when we are given meteorogically enforced times of Sabbath it is hard to take them. It may actually be a reason I like things like shovelling. When I shovel I know basically when I am done. It is possible to do a good job and a bad job of shovelling, but generally when you shovel it is clear when you are done and easy to keep working until you are. Being a pastor is one of many jobs that is never really done. Not only is the work constant but there are not even clear business hours to do that work in. I am not complaining, because actually I think I function fine in the environment in general, but for that one challenge, even a slacker like me feels guilty when I am doing nothing.

Maybe that is why God wasted one of the Ten Commandments on Sabbath, because God realized that as simple as it sounds, taking time off was going to be just as hard as not lying, swearing, or covetting what other people have. I guess maybe my resolution for the New Year may just need to be working on taking time off when I get the chance, not feeling guilty about spending a few hours in idleness, enforced externally or personally.

Business models in a church world

2008-12-10T11:14:00.002-06:00

One thing I really struggle with in the church is the yin-yang relationship I trend to have with business models. Part of me sees them as good, but in the midst of their goodness I see some thing that is wrong. Other times I look at them and see the bad side, but even then I see the speck of the good. One of the things that I keep thinking about is how helpful it would be to have people with a business mindset helping to work on new models for how we can build sustainable small churches. The reality of small communities is that they cannot always sustain the one-size-fits-all style of churches we tend to encourage in the UMC Discipline and in the general practice of the United Methodist Church. Smaller size is often seen as a negative because it implies a failure to grow and evangelize but for some contexts and styles of ministry it is truly appropriate. If we are willing to accept small churches as valid at their present size, and not simply stress the need for growth we need to look serisouly at how to staff them with the clergy they need to thrive and yet be financial stable. One answer that seems so simple to me is to develop some new models for how churches can function and have a level of economic stabilty, rather than be constantly needing support from the annual conference in order to maintain the pastor they need to continue to thrive. But that is where the yin rears its head in the midst of the yang, or the other way around, I can never remember which one is which. It is easy to say we need new models to give to our local churches but will the local churches accept them. The challenging thing in applying business models to churches is that churches do not have the same purpose as a business, which is to make money. A church needs some sense of financial stability but its underlying purpose is to make disciples of Jesus Christ. When people invest in a congretion they do not do so for monetary return but instead for something else, something emotional and spiritual. Do business models work if financial gain is not the primary benefit? Do business models help when the people applying them have other desires? I want to thinkthat business can teach us a lot about how we can change the church to function better, but then I keep getting hung up on the reality that the church is not a business and does not always function best when run like one.

The Challenges of Leading "Contemporary" Worship

2008-12-03T11:04:00.002-06:00

Who is to blame, the Chicken or the Egg? Whose fault is it that I find myself lacking good new music for Christmas and particular Advent that works well for a praise band? Is it the fact that deep down we are all traditionalists and do not believe you can do better than Silent Night on Christmas Eve, which I would agree with, and O Come, O Come, Emmanuel during Advent? We have a lot of great traditional music for Advent and Christmas so maybe there is simply not the market for new music for these seasons, even music that fits the instruments and emotions of a new generation. I would argue we have great Easter music too, and yet that does not stop artists from coming up with new ways to sing about the sacrifice, death, and resurrection of Christ. In fact without singing about those things lot of newer Christian music would not exist. So maybe it is a theology problem, most new Christian artists have been raised in more conservative evangelical churches that focus much more on the resurrection of Christ than on Christ's life. For this reason they are inspired more by his death and therefore compelled to sing more about that aspect of his ministry. Maybe theology is more the reason for the lack of music than market need/interest.

To add one final question to the puzzle, can good music not only inform, but also help create good theology. Maybe good theology is too loaded a word, but I would argue that a theology of Christ needs to be balance between Christmas and Easter and that Christ was born to more than just die. So if we had bands singing more songs about Christ's birth in the language and style that resonates in evangelical, Easter-oriented churcches would that help to shape their theology in new ways. Even if there is not a need in more main-line traditional churches to redo or attempt to replace some of the classics this time of year, for the sake of theological diversity and growth, do we need more Christmas songs that appeal to the same people who love songs with a more Easter theme to them? What do we fix first, the chicken or the egg? Do we try and change musicans first or the culture? How does a praise and worship service celebrate Christmas?

A false sense of abundance

2008-11-26T09:07:00.002-06:00

If there is one thing we are good at here in the U.S. it is making ourselves feel like we have more than we really do. Some of it comes from a strong sense of national pride. This is the United States, since WW II we have been on top of the world, an economic powerhouse of growth and prosperity. Now we are possibly heading into a prolonged recession or a maybe a depression. Where we are in technical terms is less important than the mentality that is out there which is that this is the worst its been in 70 years. While on the one hand there is a lot of gloom in the economic forecast I struggle to feel that this can really be compared to 70 years ago. I was raised with stories from my grandparents about what it was like growing up around that time. The Great Depression created a perception of scarcity and conservation that we do not have today. As I was listening to MPR yesterday I heard someone commenting on one of the shows about the bailout package and how the government had given Citibank all this money and yet now they were dramatically raising their interest rates on credit cards. Their comment was that by raising the rates we were punishing the people who likely needed the money the most. Now I am opposed to predatory lending practices, in particular business that will do the loan until your next paycheck. I find their rates and practices to be exploitive. That being said I also think we need to find a way to make an adjustment here in the U.S. I think we make it too easy for people to simply accrue more debt. We as a culture do not think about what we can afford now, we think about what we can afford later. We also have a higher expectation of what we need to survive. Now, there are a number of people who are in very great need and I do not mean to lessen that. At the same time I see so many people with cell phones and other accessories that are struggling to stay ahead. We create this perception that we need all these things and in doing so only increase the amount we have to spend just to stay afloat. I like having a cell phone and as a pastor I could potentially argue I need it for my job, but I do not think I should hav a cell phone if I am struggling to pay the mortgage. A cell phone is not worth going into debt over, neither is my cable television, my high speed Internet, or many other luxuries I enjoy. This Thanksgiving I think we need to look at our abundance and be truly thankful for what we have but we also need to look at what we have an question whether we should really have it all. Is this perception of abundance worth the debt that we as a society are accruing to have it? I think if we stopped seeing credit cards as a solution we might have a better sense of our current abundance or lack thereof.

Straining the philosophical soup

2008-11-17T09:41:00.002-06:00

So I just finish some musings for the Alternative Worship Experience service blog that I also work on. In it I try and examine, roughly the connections between our understandings of Light and Language, in particular as seen in Babel, John, and Pentecost, and the understandings of Light and Language as I remember them from Plato's analogy of the cave. I remember from the seminar I took on Plato in college that there was a school neo-Platonic thinkers that worked to try and integrate the ideas of Plato with Christian thought; building on the hintings of Plato that there was some greater force, some sense of some ultimate power or truth and attempting to connect Plato's sense of the ultimate to God. I also remember my professor at the time stating that he believed that this was not a correct interpretation of what Plato thought. I seem to recall agreeing with my professor at the time, that it was inappropriate to make Plato a monotheist based solely on his writings.

Now that being said, I attempted in my blog to strain the metaphor of Plato and to test it against the metaphor of the Word and the Light that John gives us. While clearly Plato was not a Christian I think a lot of his ideas have something to offer our Christian understanding of the world and even point at the possibility of similar truths. I guess the question I have is: can one take such philosophical writings out of context in such a way and use them to argue truths their original author would not have believed in? Or do we have an obligation as good scholars to only present them in their original context? If we never allow ourselves to stretch old ideas beyond their context how do we ever come up with new ideas and new understandings? And if we do allow such thoughts, what do we open the door up to? How does this effect our understanding of how we read Scripture? Can we stretch Scripture based on new understandings, or are we forced to try and take a strict interpretation that always seeks to root Scripture only in the intents of the original author and never to look at it afresh from our perspective. My fear in only allowing Scripture to say what the original author meant is that we limit Scriptures ability to speak powerfully and prophetically to our time and our place. However if we do allow Scripture to be stretched we open the door for intrepreations such as the one seen during the 1800's where the slavery enforced in Scripture was seen as analgous to the slavery of that time and place and so Scripture became a way of justifying on set of actions. There is an appreciable difference between straining the philosophical thoughts of Plato for whatever meaning we find in them today and straining Scripture looking for the same. No one really claims it is true because Plato said it was true. The truth of Plato comes in how much his ideas resonnate with our own understanding of the world. Scripture however we use to define the world and what is true. We place in it a reverance and value we do not usually subscribe to philsophers, even the really good ones. Scripute is meant to convict us and change us, even when we do not agree with it. Philosophers we do not agree with typically get discarded or at least resevered for intellectual debate, but they do not change the way we behave in the way we let Scripture change us. So there are differences, but still I come back to that question, how do we allow ourselves to re-read philosophers and incorporate their ideas with new ones and how do we allow ourselves to do the same thing with Scripture?

Musins on the Show Me State

2008-11-10T09:24:00.002-06:00

One of the interesting events on the recent Presidential election is that for the first time in a while, if ever, Missouri has NOT voted for the winning candidate. As I was watching the returns last week and watching as the vote in Missouri got closer and closer, I wondered if they were once again going to pull it off and back the winner. I started to ponder whether it could be said that as Missouri goes, so goes the nation, or was it more that as the nation went, so went Missouri. Certainly, with almost every other state all ready called by the major networks, it seemed more like the second one, that Missouri was simply following the lead of the majority in moving towards Obama. While Missouri was given a lot of media and political attention in the weeks leading up to the election it was not seen to be as critical as Ohio, Florida, or Pennsylvania in determining the winner. Still Missouri has been a reliable bellwether for years of which way the winds were blowing, at least until now.

Thinking about Missouri and it status as either the leader or follower made me wonder where we in the church fall in all of this. While I don't think the church should try and determine the next president, I think maybe we should wonder whether we fall into the role of following culture or do we lead it. Do we in the church simply get caught holding our finger to the wind and trying to gauge where things are going, or do we use our potentially prophetic voice to call for change to lead people in a new direction.

There are times that we need to simply follow the flow of culture, because some of what the church has to do is be ready to provide support to our communities and to speak relevantly about things that matter to people in the community. At the same time I think there are times we need to also challenge the ways things are going, to challenge what is happening. I am reminded of the saying of Dom Helder Camara, "if I give food to the poor they call me a saint, if I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist." I believe the church is called to be both saint and communist. We are called to simply the trends of culture and respond to the needs of people where they are at. We are also called to challenge the trends of the culture and look at how to change the direction society is going.

My final thought on all this is: if we really want to change society, we need to change ourselves. I think if we look at the financial crisis we are in it is easy to blame a society that supports greed and encourages personal gain at communial expense, but I think if we closer we will realize that many of the people who helped create the problem were Christians, and if we look at the church we will see the signs of greed and corruption internally as well. If we really want to change the world we need to change ourselves, then we can be a real leader, like the great state of Missouri once was, or maybe still is.

In conclusion, long terms for pastors are better for everyone.

2008-11-03T09:51:00.002-06:00

The following is a classic example of why longer appointments for pastors are good for everyone.

I have had the benefit of fencing twice in the last two weeks. On the first occasion I was generally frustrated with how things were going. I was not hitting, I was not able execute the actions I wanted to in the way I expected to. It was not a very rewarding experience. The second time I was "on." I was scoring some very nice touches, I was generally in control of the bouts I fenced and left feeling very good about how everything went.

So what is the difference between these two different events. One argument could be that the failures and frustrations of the first session taught me enough and warmed me up enough to be successful in the second one. There is potentially some validity to this, but I think there is a better answer and I will explain.

On the second occasion I was using my "second string" epee, that is the epee I consider my primary backup. I was doing this because on the first occasion I broke my first choice for an epee. Now this epee has several things wrong with it. I do not like how the tang is bent, that is the way that the blade extends from the handle. A good bend for a tang is slightly to the left and slightly down if you are a right handed fencer. This helps the point angle slightly in on your opponents hand, something I appreciate with my fencing style. Secondly the blade is bent in a slight curve to the right, again away from the way I would like it to be pointing. Usually a blade is only bent down, following the natural flow of the metal. A bend to the side is a manufacturing defect and not easily correctable. Finally the blade is not very flexible, meaning that it does not lend it self to something called a flick shot, where a fencer causes the blade to bend slightly to arc over the guard of an opponents weapon to score a hit on their arm, or even better the top or outside of their hand. So to summarize all the technical details, the blade was far from ideal when it comes to my preferred style of fencing.

Despite all the defects I listed in this weapon, it is a great example of why longer appoints are so much better for pastors and churches. Here is why: while no Bishop would have naturally appointed this weapon to me, and myself, as the congregation would have been inclined to reject such an appointment were it made, it worked out really well for me because the blade did what it was designed to do and did it consistently, for the whole time I fenced with it. The first time I fenced I went through all three of my weapons. The first blade broke, my second blade, described above, lost it's tip, required for scoring, and needed to be fixed. This meant that over the course of five or six bouts I was probably fencing two bouts with each weapon. I was spending most of my time just figuring out what a weapon could do and before I knew it the bout was over. Just as I figured out the particulars of one weapon it would stop working or break and I would be on to the next one. What made me so successful on the second occasion was that while the blade did not lend itself to my primary fencing style, it was there, bout after bout and so I was able to learn what worked, and more importantly what did work as well for the weapon. Knowing what the blade could and could not do I was able to adjust what I did and together we found a style that worked for both of us, and success followed. In fact in the end I was even to coax a couple of touches out of the blade that I had not expected after my first bout.

So this is why we need longer terms for pastors ... because while initially somethings may not seem like a good match, time gives both sides a chance to adjust and that adjustment leads to success. All of this raises a really good question. How in the world does anyone understand anything without fencing analogies to explain things?

Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?

2008-10-20T10:56:00.002-06:00

*Disclaimer, this post has nothing to do with "My Fair Lady" nor does it actually suggest women should be like men, in fact it kinds suggests the opposite, but it seemed like a great title."
I was watching a commercial yesterday during a football game. It was a commercial for I think a high-end SUV, certainly a high-end, sporty type of car. It said that most women decide on a car based upon the cup holders rather and horsepower or leather trim seats or a the beautiful finish. The commercial implied that maybe they should have asked different women. Maybe I am making an assumption but given that this was a commercial during a football game, the real sense I got was that women care about cup holders and men care about things like horsepower. The message of the commercial was that there are women out there who do not fit the cup holder stereotype. I am glad that a commercial acknowledges that there are differences in preference amongst people of the same gender. However I actually kinda wish that more men chose there cars like women, at least if the stereotypes are correct. The location of cup holders is a highly practical question. I have had car with no cup holders, which was really annoying and now I have car with four of them, which is handy even normally I do not have more than one passenger with me. Practicality is a great reason to choose a car. Whether or not a car has fancy leather seats or the highest horse-power imaginable or available seems a lot less important. I do not think we should base so many decisions on the superficial parts of the car and instead should focus more on the practical issues.

Maybe the real question is why are more commercials not targeting the practical things as a good thing. Why don't we see more commercials about where the cup holders are in a car? Why is there an attempt by marketers to make us buy things based on the superficial rather than the real in-depth stuff? Does superficial marketing really work? Or like negative campaign ads it often does not help but with an absence of real information it can seem to be effective. Anyway, I think in the end I am just disgusted that now the push of marketing is to acknowledge the differences between and within genders and yet still push people towards what I would say is the worst of both worlds, the superficial.

A Sidebar

2008-10-13T09:45:00.002-06:00

So as of last night my plan on what to talk about in my blog this week was to continue to explore my experiences with running the marathon because I feel there are a lot of interesting insights to be gained from it. However late last night and this morning something has come up that has intrigued me even more. Like a lot of Minnesotans, I am a Vikings fan, and so like many others I sat down yesterday to watch the game and this morning I got up, went online and read the Star Tribune to see what the local sportswriters were saying about the game. I tend to find the Strib writers to generally be negative and today proved to be no exception. What was remarkable to me was the level of anger and frustration expressed not just by the writers but by almost everyone who commented online about the articles. This reminded me of something I learned in seminary, it is never really about the color of the carpet. A classic case of church pettiness and in-fighting that often comes up is the examples of when churches have been torn apart about what color to make the new carpet in the sanctuary or if the church even needs a new carpet. What we are taught in serminary is that often conflicts like this are not really about carpets, they are about larger issues that cannot be expressed easily or are deliberately repressed but come out in other ways, such as feuds over colors and patterns.

The level of animousity expressed on the message boards for ever article makes me think that the Vikings are another such example of this. As I mentioned, I watched the game and I cannot say that I was overly impressed with the performance of the players and coaches on the Vikings team. I feel that there were numerous miscues at a variety of levels, however at the end of the game, the Vikings were ahead, they had won. Yes they beat a team by 2 points that had not won all year and was being outscore by about 20 pts in every other game, but they won. What is so striking to me is that immediately following the Vikings game, FOX cut away to another game in progress, and I watched as the previously win-less Rams kicked a last second field goal to beat a theoretically strong Redskins team, a team that is generally considered much better than the Vikings. The Rams, like the Lions have the distinction of having previously lost by on average baout 20 points. So do we as fans of the Vikings have a right to be upset and concerned by our teams poor performance, yes, but should we also be glad that unlike the Redskins we came away with a win, and a share of first place, yes. The aggression and negativity expressed by the "fans" is highlighted even more when in some of the articles there were numerous quotes from players expressing support for their coach and also commenting that the booing and negativity of the fans was far from helpful. Rather than simply be the sign of diehard fans who are sick of having a "sub-par" team, or fair weather fans who are seeing a few too many clouds for their liking, I think there is another cause for all the anger: the economy. At a time where people are losing homes, watching their house values plummet at the same time that stocks do and seeing economic leaders around the world scrambling for answers, it is easy to see why people would be worried. Maybe this really is all about a football team playing well under their potential, but far more likely I think it is that people need a place to vent, a place to express the hurt in their lives, and that football is a safe place to do it. We are powerless to save the stock market, and many people are powerless to even save their own mortgages, but we can log on and vent our anger into cyberspace. After 9/11, people used baseball and football as a way to come together in the midst of grief, now maybe we need to use football and baseball as ways to express our frustration, because venting about a sports team is a lot healthier than bottling it up, drinking it away, or something worse. I am not sure what the church can do to help people with their powerlessness in a time like this, but at very least maybe we can help people remember that deep down it is not about the carpets.

Marathon Thoughts

2008-10-07T09:58:00.002-06:00

So I have several different interesting posts I might want to do based on my experiences running the Twin Cities Marathon, four plus hours of running gives you plenty of time to think of things. What I wanted to comment on today was actually my energy level yesterday, the day AFTER the marathon. Sore does not begin to describe how I felt or really how I walked yesterday. Despite how I was feeling and how I was moving when I got back from the Cities yesterday I looked up my times for the marathon and looked over the course. I then began to think about how I could have done things better, trained harder, lost a few more pounds, or just run better during the actual race. After doing this for a bit I got my shoes back on and went out for a somewhat limited two mile run. I did this because one of the things that I had read was that running the day after a marathon is important to help in flushing out a lot of the bad stuff that builds up in the muscles and creates soreness to begin with. While I did not set any world records with my time I was at least out there and moving again. Later in the evening when I was stretching and continuing to think about where I go next with running I realized something, I did the exact same thing with fencing in college. Every other weekend or so I would drive to a tournament, fence until I could not move and then head back to school. Monday morning would dawn and I would limit and hobble to class but by Monday evening I was in the gym fencing again and thinking about what I needed to do to fence better next tournament. The Monday after competition in some ways was the time I was most focused and determined. My question and connection to the church that comes from all of this is why does the same not apply to our faith? I have been a part of some powerful worship services and I know others have commented at times how meaningful or energizing a service was. Do we take that energy with us into Monday? Do we ever take that measure of the Spirit we find on Sunday and use it to fuel our actions on Monday? While I understand how Sunday is easily the climax of a week, especially for clergy, I think we need to work more and more on making Monday, not as a day to drag our feet into work, but a day in which we take the energy and the Spirit we experience on Sunday and use it to make a difference, use it to fuel us in all our work before next weekend and our next powerful experience of God in worship.

Pride in my lawn

2008-09-22T08:33:00.002-06:00

I never really understood the vanity and attention that some people seemed to pour into their lawns. I also never imagined that I would ever be someone to have that kind of investment in the land surrounding my house. After this last weekend I am beginning to think that this might change. One of the flaws in the new house my wife and I purchased is the fact that instead of having nice lush grass, or really any grass, it was instead a weed covered desert. Yes, I do mean desert as in sand. One of the requirements of our purchase agreement was that we put in a lawn to make the city of Baxter happy. This meant a debate of how to best accomplish this. We talked about sod versus seed and decided that while sod sounded easy it was also really pricey. So instead we bought some seed, ordered some dirt and set to work. With the help of my parents we weeded 12,000 square feet of yard, pulling up anything that might get in the way of the new grass. Then once the dirt had been delivered and spread over the yard we set to work raking it to loosen it up for seed. After going over the entire yard with the rake we then started seeding, first horizontally and then vertically. Once the seed was on the soil it was time to once again go over things with the back of the rake in order to push the seeds into the soil and help them get started on their quest for life. Finally, after going over the yard time and time again, all I have to do now is water it as much as possible. Suddenly I have a great more invested in having a nice green lawn. Because of the effort I have poured into this I really do care about what happens to it. I think in our society we have a tendency to move towards specialization and that means that a lot of us, myself included tend to pay someone else to do jobs then spend the time doing it ourselves. While this does leave us free to do other things it lessens our investment in things. When we look to others for solutions we lose some of our attachment to the results. This is fine for a lot of things, even for lawns, but when it comes to things like ministry, we need it to be hands on, we need to have some attachment to the results. That is why I am really leaning to the notion that my job is not to be a specialist in ministry, but instead an empowerer of others to do ministry, so that all of us can have an attachment to work of God that is being done in the world.

Who are we to judge

2008-09-03T08:11:00.002-06:00

As a political junkie I have been closely following the presidential campaigns of Obama and McCain as well as the primary season before hand. One of the challenging issues this year is the question of what makes something sexist or racist. Historically this has not been a huge issue since almost every major candidate before this year have all looked basically the same (white men). With the recent selection of Sarah Palin as the VP pick for McCain the conversation that started with Clinton and Obama has returned with a passion. Both palin and Obama create the challenging question of how to distinguish legitamate criticism from prejudical criticism. Often the line is a very hard to tell the difference. I would even argue it is possible that legitmate criticisms can be raised for prejudical reasons. I believe it is quite possible to argue that Obama has less experience in government than McCain does and that Palin has less experience in government than Biden does. These assessments are not based around issues of race or gender, but a person's concern in raising them can be more about race and gender than about experience.

I woud admit that there are clear instances of sexism, racism, and even ageism present in the campaign, but I want to focus on the grey area right now. The reaso it fasccinates me is it connects, at least in my mind to a struggle I have as someone seeking to be open-minded and yet also aware that there are times I want to be able to be judgmental. When it comes to religious beliefs I find a real struggle to both be open to the reality that I do not have a complete and certain understanding of God and that others may have different and yet equally valid concepts of God while at the same time wanting to ability to say that some things are just wrong, or perhaps simply less valid. I want to make these judgments not based on some sense of what I believe compared with that which is other, but instead on a more rational, objective evaluation of belief. I want to affirm the value of Islam while still saying that many of the Jihadists are misapplying the teachings of Islam and are wrong in their beliefs.

As I look at these two paragraphs, sip my chai, and try and think what the next logical step in this line of musing is, I find the struggle really coming down to my desire for some hybrid understanding of truth that is neither completely objective nor completely subjective. I greatly value the subjective nature of truth, largely because my experience of most objective truths is taht they are really subjective truths of one person or group of people that thien get forced onto others and so begin to seem objective. At the same time, when it comes to picking a presidential candidate or evaluating a person's beliefs and how their practices match their beliefs I am left wanting an objective understanding of things, even if it is only locally objective. The philosopher in me needs to make a distinction here, when I am talking about objective and subjective truths I am largely connecting them to the ideas of absolute and realitve truths. What I struggle with in all of this what to anchor my objective, absolute evaluative understanding to. Is there any way to say that it is bad if there are logical inconsistencies between a person's faith and their practices? or is that all based on my own understanding that practice is meant to perferctly and logically follow from belief? Is there something wrong with not voting for a woman because you do not believe women are as good as men? Certinaly I find the notion appalling, not backed up by any solid evidence and in fact contradicted on many levels, but who am I to judge?

I have not really gotten any where with all this musing, but I have found the process enjoyable. I was considering spending some time today musing on the start of school, and based on this post I can tell I really do miss school. I miss lingering over a,lunch or dinner at college and picking holes in the universe with my friends until it was time to move on to other things. In a world filled with hunger, pain, poverty, and war it seems silly to spend a quiet morning ponder on largely academic, philosophical, and not really practical questions, but when I think about the gifts that God has given me, this is something I am good at, so I have to believe that somehow God finds some value in it. And yes, that believe is highly subjective to me, but in the end my reality is the one I am most concerned about, just like everyone else.

Sometimes it takes more than a spark

2008-08-18T09:29:00.002-06:00

So as part of trying something new this year, Light of the Lakes and Park have been offering monthly worship services around the campfire, one Sunday evening a month. This month the theme of the worship service was Pentecost. In order build the spirit and the mood for the worship service we decide to start by reading Acts 2:1-3 and then lighting candles and from those candles lighting the main fire. The idea was to show what those "divided tongues as of fire" could do to start a real blaze, to demonstrate what is alluded to in the hymn "Pass It On" that it really does just take a spark. Unfortunately, while we have been blessed with gorgeous whether every month, there was one flaw last night, it was windy. It maybe took a spark to get the first candle lit, but in order to keep that candle lit and to light others it took far more than just a spark. Eventually the candles were light and then from there the main fire, but it was not the dramatic chain reaction we had in mind when we planned the service. The "tongues of fire" did not just jump from one candle to the next to start a blaze. Instead it required people huddling together, people using their bodies and hands to block the wind, and more than a little help from the trusty propane lighting stick that is a staple of most worship leaders.

It often seems from a far that the Holy Spirit works like a California wild fire, certainly it seems to in other churches. As I was watching the coverage of the Civil Forum at Saddleback I was thinking about how easy Rick Warren makes it look. However, at the same time it made me wonder, how often does the story look more like what our experience last night was like and not the romantization of converting a community? How often does it really involve a lot of huddling against the winds of doubt as we click away trying to maintain that flame of faith in our lives enough to spread it to others? Other people seem to be blessed with a light and spirit in their lives that blazes enough to set alight a whole community, but looking at my own faith, inspite of how strong my belief is, it much more resembles that small lighter, clicking away and working hard to start a blaze in others and fighting a lot of wind to do so. The reality is Pentecost was one awesome event, but the rest of the story is about how hard the Disciples and in turn their disciples worked to keep the fire going through the winds of time.

How do you like your Grace?

2008-08-11T08:35:00.002-06:00

So a conversation the other day spurred this question in my head, how do you like the song Amazing Grace? Since I was young, which given my age means since I was a child I have loved Amazing Grace, in my early years it was as song by a good choir, in particular I enjoyed an African-American one, probably because of a special on the song I saw parts of on PBS as a child. By middle school my favorite version of Amazing Grace was one done on the bagpipes, which they had played at Hamline UMC as part of our fall Rally Sunday worship.

Recently my father introduced me to the concept of Amazing Grace, done to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun." A good version I have found along those lines is by the Blind Boys of Alabama. At the same time I was given a burned version of the song done by Ani DiFranco. Rather than simply trying to sing the song as written she puts her own unique spin on it, adding her own unique, dare I say angsty flare which gives the lyrics a greater depth of meaning.

What stirred up this question was yet another version of Amazing Grace that we learned at Vacation Bible School this year, which was basically simply a sped up, child-friendly, peppy version, that worked really well, moving from slow and spiritual to up-beat and praise-filled. Last night I heard Amazing Grace sung as part of a story of about grace. This time it was sung with the passion and feeling of a country gospel singer. In my various excursions onto iTunes I have noticed that a wide variety of artists have done their own version of Amazing Grace. Many are simply the attempts of great singers to perform the song as technically perfect as possible. Others take the song and sing it in a way that is natural and authentic to them. Amazing Grace with a twist of Country, a dash of pop, or something in between.

As I think about all these versions of Amazing Grace I love the song all the more because of its versitlity. I have heard different statistics about how times various Beatles songs have been covered or "Stairway to Heaven" (which is best done as a classical music piece), but the beauty of Amazing Grace to me is that it is so simple a song and yet so rich in meaning that all of these different versions have the power to move, the power to speak to us. There is no one way to sing such a song of grace and love, except the way that comes naturally to each of us. So I ask again, how do you like your Grace?

Free Speech and Religion

2008-07-28T08:32:00.002-06:00

I recently read an article in the Star Tribune which talked about the controversy surrounding a professor who was producing potentially offensive images. The debate was whether his images were protected by free speech and the concept that with art anything goes, or whether their sacrilegious nature allowed him to be punished creating them. The art in question consisted of a Eucharist wafer that was stabbed with a nail and had scraps of the Qur'an as well as a book by Richard Dawkins. The intent of Professor Meyers was to illustrate that there is nothing that should be held as sacred, neither religious texts and artifacts, nor scientific ones. My question on this is where does Meyers' right to dialogue and his opinions conflict with the beliefs of Muslims and Catholics who feel that the Qur'an and the Host respectively contain the divine and are more than just the empty symbols that Meyers views them as. Personally I am quite torn on this issue. I greatly value the free flow of ideas and believe that we must work hard to allow people to express their opinions, even opinions which seem to run contrary to others or may even be offensive to others. I am well aware that open-minded liberal thinking often becomes highly exclusive when it comes to considering the opinions of fundamentalists. At the same time I feel that Meyers did not do this act as part of a discussion, he did it to create a response, to prove a point. And as myself and other bloggers are proving, he was sucessful in creating a response. I am not sure he really proved a point, though others may disagree with me. I think Meyers' actions are inappropriate because they were not intend as dialogue nor did they respect the views of others. Meyers did not set out to offer his opinion as to why objects are not sacred and that these items were merely symbols. With complete disregard to the views of others, views he was well aware of, he took religious artifacts and desecrated them. I am not sure I want to say his actions should be illegal, because to do so would seem to impose the religion of some over the religion of others. I do believe that we as individuals in this society have a right to be outraged by his actions and that we have the right to desire better forms of conversation. I believe there are better ways for him to freely express his beliefs over and against the beliefs of others. I think really my need to blog on this also just to work through the sorrow I feel at an issue like this. From what I understand there were a great number of people on the Internet encouraging Meyers in his actions, which reminds me how many people are out there who are hurting from things the church has done to them. Unfortunately the inappropriate responses of many Christians who made threats on Meyers and elevated his actions through their own hatred further deepen the rift between Christians and ex/non-Christians. From those of us who want to find a better way, this action by Meyers destroys not only sacred items, it destroys some hope we have in reconciliation sooner rather than later.

Resistance is Futile

2008-07-17T12:18:00.003-06:00

I always like to say that my parents raised me right, which meant that one of the things I did growing up was watch Star Trek: the Next Generation. This allowed me to learn about the Borg, a race of aliens who move around the galaxy assimilating other species into their collectives. Their famous line is "resistance is futile, you will be assimilated." In the last couple of weeks I have received a couple of mailings at church inviting me to attend a new seminar, "The Assimilation Seminar: From First Time Guest to Long Time Members." This mailing both reminded me of my old Star Trek days and also disturbed me. I don't like the idea that goal of the church is to assimilate visitors into our church collective. First of all, the Borg at least tried to take the best of all those and so the collective was changed as new people were assimilated in, something that is not really implied in this church assimilation. I also just don't like the notion that conformity is the solution for the church. I think there is a tendency in the church for us to value membership and conformity too much in the church. We want visitors to come into the church but we really want them to leave looking just like us. While I believe that the church as something to offer people, namely a Gospel of love and grace that will change people's lives, I also think we need to realize that visitors have something to offer those of us in the church as well. How do we look at visitors not by what they need from us, but instead by what they offer us. I don't mean what they offer us in terms of "another Sunday school teacher" or "a strong giving unit" or "the next chair of the trustees." I mean what do visitors have to offer us in our faith journeys. How can we learn from visitors in the same way that we want them to learn from us? I guess the kind of assimilation I like is the one where both sides are changed by the other, so that all are bettered by the experience.

Slaves to the Law

2008-06-30T08:16:00.002-06:00

One of the lectionary texts for this last week was Romans 6, one of the instances where Paul talks about being a slave to the law and a slave to sin. He contrasts this slavery with an enslavement to God. What I find unfortunate is that we as a society continue to operate as slaves to the law. This can be seen I think in our obsession with lawyers and everything legal. As a society we fall back time and time again to what it says in the rules, rather than seeking the spirit of the law, or to follow a sense of what is right.

Now I can undersatnd there are some challenges in simply asking people to follow what is right, since unless it is defined, say in the laws, what is right remains highly relative and so largely unenforcable. Buti think what I really object to i the fact that we as a society need enforcement. What we lack is trust. Paul encourages people to be slaves to obedience, which he says leads to righteousness. I think he wants us to trust each other and to trust God. What we do not need is additional rules and bylaws to govern how we operate, what we need is a willingness to trust in one another in order to get things done.

Here is I think a good ancedote of what I am talking about. Unfortunately my facts for it are a little bit blurry because some of the information is second hand and I have not been able to independently varify it. From what I understand, a pastor was recently fired from a church for inappropriate use of the Internet but was reinstated after he sued citing the fact that there was no formal policy at the church governing Internet conduct. Now I can understand the desire on the part of a pastor, or anyone really to want to be clear about the expectations they are being held accountable to. But I think there also needs to be some respect for the fact that if a church, or really any employer wants to let a person go, that is their right. The pastor in this instances needs to trust the church, that if what has been done is so terrible to them, policy or no policy, it is time for a separation.

I am not pushing for everyone to vote Bob Barr and get the Libretarians into office, or anything extreme like that. I recognize the need for laws to help in governing a society. However I think Paul reminds us that laws simply lead to penalities and punishment. There are few if any laws on the books designed to reward people for good behavior; laws are meant to restrict bad behavior. On the contrary, trust does reward good behavior and there is much that can be achieved outside the law to reward those who help society.

In the end I just wish people took the Rule of Christ to heart and worked to resolve things individually or in a small group, stopping problems and resolving issues long before they seek legal recourse for their actions. I feel that if we could trust each other, and the government more, than our society would be a lot better off than if we enacted thousands of more laws and hired thousands more police officers to enforce them.

From Billionaire to Bust

2008-06-24T09:01:00.002-06:00

I read a fascinating series of articles on Bill Gates and his transition into "retirement" at Microsoft. Growing up I never had the most favorable opinion. As someone who grew up initially not using an IBM compatible machine, the rise of Microsoft and its seemingly cutthroat practices left we wary of their leader. However I have been impressed in recent years with the passion and zeal that Gates has approached his charitable work with. Reading these articles my respect for him increased. According to Fortune.com, Gates is planning on giving away all about 1% of his money, I assume the bulk of that going to the Gates Foundation. While this was an impressive figure in and of itself, what even more impressed me was that one of the goals of the Gates foundation, was for it to be out of money by the end of the century. Given that they currently have about 100 billion dollars, this is an impressive goal. What attracts me most to this is that the foundation is more concerned with results rather than a legacy. Even minute return rates the foundation could be living off the interest every year. Instead they want to spend the money in calculated ways to solve problems that are facing the world right now, like AIDS and malaria in Africa, or poverty. What I think the Gates understand is that the foundation does not exist to exist, but it exists to create positive change in the world. I think we need to think more like that in church. I know that a number of churches have healthy endowments and I know those endowments can do a great many wonderful things, but I think at times they can instead facilitate one thing and one thing only, the continuation of the church, rather or not it is actually functioning in the world. So the irony as I finish this thought is that this post seems to be about pushing forward at a deliberately unsustainable pace while my last post was about finding a healthy pace to go at. Guess this is why I never claim to have answers for things ...

The New Church Start Marathon

2008-06-23T14:48:00.002-06:00

So one of the draw backs, or perhaps upsides of training for a marathon is that it provides a focal point or lens for a lot of my ideas and musings. This post is no exception. So in order to monitor my progress as I am training I carefully log my running times and distances. While this has its benefits it also can create a negative measuring stick to compare myself against, as today revealed to me.
One of the things that I have noticed is that my indoor running times are much better than my outdoor times. One of my theories for this is that the treadmill does a better job of setting a challenging pace than my own willpower and natural stride do. Being aware of this, I set out today to try and run my three mile course outside faster than I usually do. (Not because of I am competitive, just because I wanted to being improving, or something like that anyway) Since the course is roughly a straight-line out and back I can create benchmark times heading out to try and meet going back. As I raced out I was aware of two things, one my times were looking good for making an improvement, and two I was feeling winded and weak. The whole way out I was straining to keep up a good pace and constantly aware of a huge drain on my energy as I ran. When I approached the halfway mark I was a little off of my target time but still in good shape to set a new personal best.
Unfortunately, even as I was turning the corner to head for home it became clear that what I might want was not what my body was going to give me. I made a choice at that point to scale back my speed a bit, searching for a stride and pace that was comfortable to me, regardless of what it did to my time and goal.
As I reflected on this decision I realize that it was actually a better alignment with my real goal in being out running. When I decided to run a marathon my primary goal was to complete it and hopefully not be too much of a hindrance to my older brother who was running it with me. To that end, the goal I had for my running today was to complete three miles. I tried to overwrite my three mile goal with a new goal, to run three plus miles in a pace faster than an 8 minute mile. In striving for this new goal I almost failed in my original goal of running three miles. If I had needed to stop because of burnout after 2 miles, even if my pace had been way under an 8 minute mile I would have still failed in my real goal, which was running 3 miles as part of my marathon training.

Ok, so how does this connect to the church, and in particular new church starts? For the last two years I have been the pastor of a now 12 year old new church start. Started in 1996, Light of the Lakes has been struggling for years to grow much beyond the original membership size of 30. While worship attendance and membership numbers have peaked at various times as high as 60 or 70, the general trend as been to remain around 40-50. As far as new church starts go this is not really considered a success.
Most new church starts have goals of reaching self-sufficiency in only a couple of years, with many abandoning outside funding in the first year of their ministry. Light of the Lakes on the other hand has been recieving support from the Annual Confernece off and on since it began. Without the generous support of the conference, amongst other things, I am sure the doors of the church would not be open today.
As I think about the church, its growth patterns, and my own ministry there over the last two years I see some similarities to my experiences running today. It is easy to set goals for Light of the Lakes with regards to growth that resemble a sprint, growing by leaps and bounds as one might say. However as I think about the relationships I have formed over the last two years and the growth we have seen, slow and steady is a much more apt term for our growth. While we are not going to be setting any records for church growth nor are people banging on our door asking for us to write a book about our success, I think that this slow and steady growth is fitting for Light of the Lakes at this time.
My experience running today has reminded me that there is more than one way to go about meeting our goals, and really no matter what goals we set for growth, or the Annual Conference sets for growth, it is God's goals that matter, and really I believe that God's goals are more about transformation than they are about size. It is tempting and I often try to overwrite God's goals with my own, but as I think about how to make things succeed at Light of the Lakes in the next couple of years, I realize that what we need is a pace and purpose that fits with the natural stride of the church and puts us back on track with where God wants us to go and how God wants us to get there.

Race Against the Machine

2008-06-16T08:28:00.002-06:00

So as I sit here in the coffee shop begin to form my thoughts for the blog, I am overhearing the conversation of two ladies at the table next to me. They are talking about their churches and the work they do in them. In particular they seem to be excitedly talking about everything that is happening at their churches. It makes me wonder what my members say when they meet people for coffee. Are they as excited about their church? What more could we do to create those conversations about Park and Light of the Lakes. I think of the hardest things about being a pastor is avoiding envy of other churches. It always seems the pews are fuller, the budget larger, the passion greater on the other side, or at least on some other side. This is not to say that I am not happy with the churches I serve, but one can always find things we would want in a church.

This connects really well with what I had been planning to write about. I am currently in the process of training for the Twin Cities marathon in the fall. Obviously this means I need to do a lot of running and so in order to support me and get in shape herself, my wife is also doing some training, though she is biking instead. To allow her to go faster we have been working out a lot in the exercise room in our apartment. This lets her go her pace on the stationary bike while I go my pace on the treadmill. Working out on a machine is a tough thing for me to do. Normally when I am running I have some sense of the time I have been running and also some idea of where I should be at for that time, so I always am pushing myself a little bit to go faster than the time before. Machines are far worse for me.

No matter how hard I try, no matter how fast I go, I can always set the machine to a higher setting. Having a competitive nature is not always a good thing when it comes to competing against a machine, or as it really works out, against myself. I run and I run and I run, but the harder I run, the more I realize I could be running faster. I think the same is true in the church. We can work and work and work, but no matter what we can always be doing a little bit more. There is almost always a church that is doing something better, that has more people in worship, or more small groups, or whatever. Even if you are the best church in the town, or the city, or the conference, or whatever, more can be done. As listening to the people next to me reminds me, there is always more that can be done. I am so excited about what is happening at Park and Light of the Lakes, but at the same time I know there is always more we can be doing.

I guess the question I am left with is ... should church be competitive in the way that running is competitive, that we are really pushing against the best we could do. Or is even that level of competition bad for the church? Will that holding our selves to a competitive standard result in better ministry, or nothing more than a blaming burnout as we sprint into the ground? Just some thoughts ...

You Know Your a Feminist When ...

2008-06-11T10:32:00.002-06:00

So in a rare bout of energy I am working feverishly to get ahead on my items for Sunday. The final piece of my bulletin, besides announcements is my congregational prayer. On Mother's day I tried to compose a nice prayer for mothers as a fitting tribute for the day. I even subtly changed the language in the text of the Lord's Prayer to read "Our Mother, who art in heaven." When it came time for this Father's Day prayer however I struggled. It was much harder for me to write a prayer about fathers than it was about mothers. Weaving the term "Mother-God" into a prayer felt natural though a bit controversial for my setting but the term "Father-God" while perhaps more appropriate for the setting, is impossible for hands to really even type, let alone lead a prayer around. All of my training for the last 27 years has been around language that represents the concept of God that goes beyond gender and so I struggle with language that while balanced in terms of how I have honored mothers, feels like a step backwards because of the patriarchal images it invokes in my mind. I know there is softer language than "Father-God" but I just struggle with how to pray for fathers without invoking patriarchal language and imagery. I hope in time we can have holistic, positive language that properly represents God, but I wonder if that can ever be done while connecting to either gender without invoking negative and oppressive images at the same time. For now I will just soften my prayer this week and move on ... until next year when these holidays come up again.

Annual Conference musing

2008-06-09T08:55:00.002-06:00

Over the past few years the MN Annual Conference has done a lot of things that I have been happy about. This year was no exception to that. However while there was a lot of good that was done this year, there was one area I actually feel like we had a glimpse of greatness and then fell horribly short. One of the big things about Annual Conference/General Conference and really just any meeting is that I want it do something. I do not need measurably results at every meeting, but I want there to be progress made in some form or other. If nothing gets passed or done, but there is great conversation, that is fine by meeting, but if all we do is pass empty petitions and meaningless resolutions, I feel we have let the church down.

This year one of the topics brought before Annual Conference was Fair Trade coffee. Even though I am a non-coffee drinker this is something I am really passionate about. The proposal was to have the coffee provided at Annual Conference be only Fair Trade coffee. I was glad that we were getting ready to do something rather than just talk about things. This was a chance for us to do more than just pass an empty resolution. During the discussion the concern was raised that it may not simply be an issue of cost, but that the convention center where Annual Conference is held may be bound by its vendor contracts and be unable to acquire Fair Trade coffee. One person made the bold proposal that we then not serve coffee next year at Annual Conference ... have a coffee fast. Based on the discussion it was seen to be less a fast from all coffee, but more a push to not provide coffee that was not Fair Trade. I know from my own caffeine quests during Annual Conference there are several excellent coffee shops in walking distance of the convention center, one even has compost-able cups!

Not surprising in a United Methodist meeting, but the idea of not serving coffee was not popular. There was a great deal of concern about the inconvenience this would cause us. Ultimately the coffee fast proposal was removed and the original petition passed. What it lacked however was any real teeth should the convention center simply say it was not willing/able to provide Fair Trade coffee. I know that going without coffee would create an inconvenience of people, just like me having to do without my chai tea would make Annual Conference less fun for me. However I do not believe we can expect to change the world without having some costs, without making some sacrifices. I was sad that we decided the increased cost/work/inconvenience of going without coffee or having to bring in coffee from off-site was too much to ask for to help out workers in Central and South America.

I am excited we in The United Methodist Church as pushing for change and working to make a difference in the world, I just hope in the future we can do a better job of taking some risks and bearing some personal costs to make the world better for everyone.

A long pause

2008-06-03T15:56:00.002-06:00

I feel terrible about going a whole month without writing anything ... partially cause I know people still check the blog and so I feel bad for not providing new content, but also because it means there is a huge backlog in my mind of things I have meant to be thinking about but keep putting off until I have the time/space for them. Vacation stacked up against Annual Conference, with a week of frantic work in between certainly makes it hard to get all my thoughts out.

One concept that has been going through my head recently is the similarities of pastors and fire fighters. I am currently in the process of training for a marathon (a whole post in its own write). One day while I was running and listening to my iPod a song came on about the firefighters who rushed into the World Trade Center. The song, by Tom Paxton, talks about how these firefighters were rushing up the stairs while everyone else was running down. As I was running to get back into shape, this song reminded me of how much conditioning firefighters must do just to be fit enough to help save other peoples lives. I think pastors need to be in similar shape.

While pastors do not need the same physical conditioning as firefighters, we need a level of spiritual conditioning that rivals them. Like firefighters, I think pastors' lives are a lot of waiting for the bell to go off and us to need to spring into action. We have tasks that keep us busy on a day to day basis, but ultimately we never know when a call will come in that really taxes us. As I work at getting in shape physically it really makes me wonder if I am in enough shape spiritual that I could save a life if needed. I think I could be of help to someone who was maybe in minor distress, but do I have what it takes when something big comes along? To some extent I may never know; until something happens, but I feel like I need to do more to be ready. What am I doing to burn of the spiritual flab as well as the physical stuff? What are you doing to stay in spiritual shape? That is what I get for listening to the Bishop all week before writing this stuff down.

Post #100

2008-05-06T08:51:00.002-06:00

According to my blog managing software this is my 100th post for this blog. It has been interesting to record my musing, speculations, and chai-induced thoughts for the 99 posts. It has also been interesting to get feedback from different people in real life about what they read in my blog. I love how blogs create community in ways that extend beyond church walls, city lines, and so on.

Yesterday while listening to the radio I heard an interesting assessment of the struggle between Israel and Palestine. The commentator was asserting that Israel was one of the most successful examples of a group struggling for independence and nationhood while Palestine was one of the least successful. His theory on the subject was that Israel's success came from a willingness to take the small gains that were offered and continue to build towards its goals. Palestine on the other hand has gotten locked up in an all-or-nothing struggle. Often the small gains offered in carefully negotiated compromises have been rejected by the more extreme factions who want it all. So how does this apply to other areas and other struggles? What is more important, success or principles?

Looking at the civil rights struggle of the '50s and '60s, the goal was basically all-or-nothing, bu it was done in a steady systematic fashion. The Montgomery bus boycott did not seek to end all segregation in one fell swoop, but instead to change one small area of injustice. Gradually it moved towards the larger goal. Ultimately the movement was successful, at least at getting rid of legal segregation and discrimination, though the case can be made that they still exist in other forms. Would it have been acceptable to stop short of this goal? If the strategy is to work on small gains, it seems there is a risk that one can hit a point where more progress cannot be made. As Xeno's Paradox points out, if we are constantly moving half-way towards our goal we will never reach it. Are there some issues were partial progress is not acceptable for moral reasons? Would it have been acceptable to only partially eliminate slavery? While compromise is a good thing, are there some times we must fight for everything, no matter the costs? Does the chance of success need to be a factor in the discussion.

Looking again at the issue of slavery, what if freeing the slaves had not been so easy? Certainly right after the fracturing of North and South, it was possible to eliminate slavery in every state that remained in the Union, and even to protect the rights of any escaped slave who made it across the line into the North. However, the majority of slaves would have remained enslaved. If the roles were reversed and the South was more powerful than the North, should the "war to free the slaves" have taken place? Should the freedom of some slaves in the North have been risked in order to free more by going to war? My instinct is that it is important to risk everything to battle injustice, but are there points where it is best to simply remove some injustice for now and wait until the time is right to remove other injustice later? How gradual can change be before it becomes too slow for issues like injustice and oppression? I guess my struggle and the source of all my questions and preponderances on this topic is that my gut instinct is that there are a number of issues around injustice that in the end really are meant to be all-or-nothing, but does this mean that simply seeking partial gains along the way is bad? Is it wrong to settle at times for something less than total justice? How long is too long to wait for change? I cannot find answers in this today, but I want to keep asking the questions and pushing for what are the best ways to work for change in the world.

Membership and the Church

2008-04-29T08:33:00.002-06:00

One of the topics being debated at the General Conference of The United Methodist Church this year is the ability for a pastor to define membership. In particular the ability of a pastor to say that a person is not fit to be a member. I just finished a book "The Search to Belong" that talked about how different people belong in different ways. One of the illustrations used was of a woman who identified as a member of the church because she watched the worship services on television. The church may have had strict membership rules, it may have had lax requirements, none of that mattered to the woman, she got her sense of belonging through the connection she shared over television. This story to me speaks to one of the challenges around church membership. Does it matter what we say a member is if that is not what is practiced by those around us?
As I think academically at this I can see a value for the church to work hard to maintain boundaries around membership. I mean, if we are to be a Christian church certainly membership should in part be about a belief/relationship with Christ, shouldn't it? The more I think about it however the more I question whether I can fairly dictate what it mean for someone to belong to the church. Some people find belonging to mean still receiving the newsletter in a nursing home hundreds of miles away. Other people think that it is really about a core commitment to give of our prayers, our presence, our gifts, and our service. I guess I just wonder if we are ever able to legislate the idea of belonging, or if we are better off simply working to enhance the belong of everyone through a variety of ways. Other than for the purpose of quantitative analysis what value is there to counting membership? I think it would be possible to encourage participation and even highly active participation without enforcing standards around "joining" a church.
My closing question is how do we encourage various ways of belonging while still try to appease the structures of the church that ask for a formal status of belong called membership?

Feeding the Root

2008-04-22T08:57:00.002-06:00

I was listening to a speaker from the Minnesota DNR talk about trees yesterday and one thing he said struck me as particularly profound for church growth. "Do not fertilize a stressed tree." He described a stressed tree as one that was in a drought, or afflicted with an insect attack, or similar strain on it. The problem with fertilizer is that all it does is force trees to put out more leaf growth. This extra growth does not help the tree, but instead increases the strain on the tree as it forces it to put even more of its scant resources it to extraneous leaf production. From what I can tell it is the equivalent of opening new stores when sales are down.

So how does this all connect to the church? For me the connection arises out of a recent conversation around the pressures of benchmarks in churches. With the budget strain that churches face, and the pressures facing denominations as a whole, there is increased pressure for churches to demonstrate growth, to be able to clearly measure and express the effects they are having. In the midst of a potential church-wide drought, there is a great deal of pressure to show lots of leafy growth in the church. There is a real pressure for a church to pour on the fertilizer in an attempt to create showy numerical growth without seriously addressing the deeper needs. From what I gather, fertilizer will not really help feed and grow the roots. In fact a lot of the deeper growth needed for sustainability in the long term is hurt by extraneous growth for show during hard times.

In a time where benchmarks and measurable growth is needed, how do we in the church attend first to the immeasurable growth that goes on beneath the surface? How do we look first to building our root structure, so that when the rains do fall we are poised and ready to grow? How do we assess the rain levels for the church? How do we know when there is growth out there we are missing and when is it simply a dry season for the church? When it is time to grow within and when is it time to grow without?

Everything in balance

2008-04-14T08:51:00.003-06:00

This weekend I was struck by the subtle balance that exists in nature. On Sunday it was difficult, even for someone with my young eyes to easily read the power-point slides during worship. After the service I worked with someone to try and find font combinations, contrast/brightness settings, and other technical changes that would facilitate people's viewing. After many different attempts I was ultimately unable to make a noticeable difference in the readability. The bottom line was that the screen was simply too washed out. We have had to battle a little with washed-out images in the past but this was by far and away the worst it had been. My theory is that it is because of the snow, which led me to a profound appreciation of the balance that exists in nature.

As we move closer and closer to the summer solstice the light from the sun becomes more and more direct, making things appear more and more bright. Usually however, as the sun begins to brighten the snow begins to melt, and a balance of light in the world is maintained. This year however, because of the weather we have gotten, the fourth Sunday of spring was probably the snowiest in the Brainerd/Baxter area. All of the direct rays of the sun we are now getting on this beautiful, sunny, spring days are bouncing off the glistening snow cover and further increase the level of light we have around. Short of shutting out the light there is nothing that we could do to fix the problems with our projection system. Normally nature helps us out, keeping a better balance to the light around us, but not this year. It often seem to take an imbalance for us to really appreciate just how carefully constructed and balanced nature really is. To appreciate all the work that has gone into Creation. All I ask is that next week Nature leave my worship power-point slides alone.

Founding the Church of Jeff Ozanne

2008-04-08T08:42:00.002-06:00

The recent controversy around the sermon's of Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor, as well as recent studies which show the high percentage of people who switch denominations over the course of one's life raises an interesting question, how much do people need to believe what their pastor, their church, and their denomination believe? The other way of looking at it is how much do the pastor, the church, and the denomination have to believe what I believe. It is obviously impossible for church, pastor, and parishioner to be lock-in-step on every issue. The only way that is going to happen is if we each found our own churches. There needs to be a lower standard than 100% agreement, but what is it? Some people would say that the percentage of agreement is not nearly as important as what people agree on. It would be possible for an fundamentalist Christian and a fundamentalist Muslim to have the same beliefs around the importance of scripture, but what they call scripture is going to be different and that difference alone is enough to make them choose two very different places of worship. I think on the whole people look for people/ideas/experiences like theirs when they choose a place to worship. I just wonder how if there are things that are more important or less important around those issues.

One of the growing trends of the church is the mobility of members. This is not new in the last ten years but is certainly new over the life of the Church. A lot of church growth in the United States is not new people joining the faith, but people switch to new churches or returning to church after years of inactivity. We are not expanding so much moving around within the large tent of the Church. When is the right time to leave a church? Do you leave because the pastor is too liberal or too conservative for your views? What if you agree with the pastor but not the majority of the congregation? Many churches as a whole are asking the question of what to do when the denomination they are a part of makes a choice very different from their own. Do you stay in a church because of what it believes or because of what it is doing? How long do you try and motivate a church to take action before you leave?

When I was in high school my parents left the church we had been going to and joined another United Methodist church. I cannot recall all of their reasons for leaving. I stayed because I had hope that things could change, and I also stayed because ultimately what was more important to me at that point was the community of faith I was in. Though I was involved in the direction of the church and active in trying to make a difference in the church, ultimately what caused me to stay when my parents left was that I wanted to still be a part of that community. I know my parents made the right choice for them, they are at a new church, happy there and being part of exciting ministry efforts. There is obviously not a hard and fast answer, but I think the closest I come up with is the litmus test of ministry. Do you still feel you can do good ministry in the church you are a part of? If you cannot, then it is time to look for something new. I think we sometimes choose the wrong reasons for leaving churches or switching denominations but I think we can stay for the wrong reasons too. I think the church and the Church both need to look at the consumerist culture around membership we are creating and need to work to change that culture to one that is more oriented around calling and ministry. I think we need to look seriously at the importance of orthodoxy and orthopraxy in what church we choose to join and stay at. Lots of fun questions and challenges, but I think I will leave them for another day.

The Mystery of Worship

2008-04-01T09:19:00.003-06:00

We are starting something new at Park and Light of the Lakes this week, we are calling it AWE for Alternative Worship Experience. The hope is to create a viable worship alternative to the traditional and contemporary worship services that dominate Brainerd and Baxter. We want to give people a chance to engage in worship with their whole bodies, using all their senses, moving beyond their chairs. Understandably as the lead person at present on this project (I have an awesome team surrounding me) I am rather nervous about how this is all going to work this week. This new service is something we are trying in April just with the two churches so we can see how it works. What was really interesting to me as I worked to drum up enthusiasm for the service was the curiosity that naturally accompanied something new. People were excited to know what we were going to be doing. Maybe this is something that is missing from our worship.

Does curiosity add to the experience of worship? Is mystery something we are missing in our current models of worship? One of the things I was thinking about doing to generate interest in the service was to simple put out a list of all the different things we would need for the service so that people could be wondering how we would use a fish tank in worship? Most of us know what is going to be happening in worship on Sunday morning and I think because of that it is easy for us to fall into a bit of a routine around it. Instead of something that spurs us to knew depths of understanding around God, we simply re-emerse ourselves in the familiar. The United Methodist Church's study on communion described it as a "holy mystery" which I think is a fitting title for communion. How often do we marvel and wonder at the grace imbued in a piece of bread and a sip of juice? Can we worship in a what that is constantly filled with mystery, curiosity, and wonder or do we need something stable and constant in general which creates the contrast? As we move ahead with these new attempts at worship I think this question will continue to be explored. Do we need to have our own constant and familiar to use as a foil, or do the mainstream models of contemporary and traditional services create the necessary backdrop for the new, the different, the mysterious? Will this lead us into a deeper sense of worship or just puzzlement?

If you are curious about what we are doing, we are creating a blog of the experience at http://awe-inspired.blogspot.com

The Swirling Maelstorm of Language

2008-03-25T08:51:00.002-06:00

I am currently reading Tim Keel's book, "Intuitive Leadership" and amongst other things he talks about the difference in how different languages are read. The three styles of language he talks about are Chinese, Hebrew/Arabic, and Greek/English. Chinese, as well as other languages of that region have a pictorial value to their language. The symbols used often partially reflect the word they are representing. By contrast Greek and English use completely arbitrary and abstract symbols combined together to make words which only have meaning when we are taught them but often hold little resemblance to the things that refer to. Keel also notes that in Arabic and Hebrew one reads right to left, which apparently requires the use of the right brain instead of the left, and that Hebrew and Arabic do not use vowels, so that part of the act of reading is the filling in of those gaps. The result, Keel argues is that language takes on a greater meaning because of the increased stimulation.

I could go on and on about language, how its meanings are shaped by culture, and so on, but instead I wanted to spend a moment of the question of how we read. Unfortunately because of the format I am using, we are forced to look at this topic through a limited lens but I will still try. The idea that I wanted to talk about was less the question of left to right/right to left/top to bottom, but instead the nonlinear way of speaking and reading. When I go to outline my sermon, I often struggle with seeing a clear line through the swirl of ideas that I usually start from. Some of this is necessary refining to take the often caffeine induced ideas that I start from when preaching. Part of the challenge is that people often make better sense of something when it is done literally, and really the two sermon formats that I was taught were inductive and deductive, so either working from a conclusion and following its progression or working towards a conclusion. The image I have in my mind is something I recall from learning about Jewish Biblical studies, where a text of scripture is placed at the heart and then written around it are the various interpretations of different Rabbis through the years. I like the idea of simply saturating someone with ideas and letting them sort out all of the connections.

I guess my question in all of this is whether it is possible, in the context of a sermon, to have an effective, non-linear conversation. Can one use the swirling nature of language, imagery, and ideas and simply spin out ideas for the congregation allowing them to make the connections. Rather than being a process of moving from or towards a conclusion it becomes the art of creating multiple conclusions, or at least introducing the possibility to go many different ways from the same ideas. I think I am stuck on the question of if there is something to aspire towards, in a sermon that would be a better understanding of God, can you lead people towards a universal end while allowing for multiple paths? I want to hold in tension the desire for some sort of universal aim while respecting the need for different paths to move towards that end. What worries me is whether it is possible to allow people to engage in their own journey, their own quest towards understanding while at the same time actively moving them forward on that journey. I think the hard part is that even the concept of moving forward assumes the understanding of a some sort of goal, which would assume that in order for a pastor to help people forward a pastor must have some sense of what that direction looks like. How do we allow for different paths of truth while still assuming an ultimate sort of truth, even something as simple as a God who is knowable in some form. I feel like there is a compromise out there. I feel like there is a way to have a sermon/message/experience with the Word, that allows for people to access God and learn about God without requiring forgone conclusions or a linear projection towards or from sort of absolute.

I feel that I am largely left with no great conclusions on this, but I hope the swirl of my thought has been interesting to follow and gives you a sense of what is going on in my brain at present.

A brief meditation on light

2008-03-21T10:09:00.002-06:00

This is one instance where I wish I had a camera around with me at all times. Last night we did a Tenebrae service at Light of the Lakes where we read through the passion narrative and slowly darkened the church by putting out candles one at a time. While the church did grow gradually darker as the readings continued, a lot of that was do to the sun setting and not because the candles were putting out so much light as to make a huge difference. The change that I really did notice was in the way the candle looked after its flame was extinguished. Because the candles were white against a white background of the altar cloth, once the light was out they blended into the backdrop. I was just struck by the powerful imagery of this, that it really is that light, the light of Christ that helps our lives to stand out for people. These candles were not providing a whole lot of light, but the little light they did provide made all the difference in whether or not you even noticed them. It reminds me of the song "and they'll know we are Christians by our love." How are we preparing to let the Easter light, the light of Christ burn brightly in our lives to help illuminate the darkness, how are we letting that light stand out against the plain backdrop of our lives? Just a few thoughts as we move through the darkness towards Easter's dawn.

The Depravity of Humanity

2008-03-20T09:06:00.002-06:00

At UMYS, the gathering of United Methodist high school students in Minnesota, I was bombarded at several points by songs and speakers that stressed our total dependence on God. While I would agree that each of us needs God, what I struggled with was the accompanying belief that without God, we are nothing, or really that left to our own devices, humans will tend towards evil and failure. This low view of humanity has been around for a long time. Luther certainly believed in the total depravity of humanity and our great need for grace. Several different branches of the Christian faith today also stress this same depravity and dependency.

Now I should make it clear that I know from my own numerous failings in life that I am far from perfect and certainly in need of God's grace. I guess I want us to have a better sense of God's prevenient grace. I think if we have too low of an opinion of humanity, we are in fact insulting God. I am not big on the whole idea of original sin and its completely destructive effects on our lives. What I struggle with is that God's creation, namely us, could have been so fragile that we could screw it up so bad in one go. When we talk about the depravity of humanity we are talking about the depravity of God's creation. While I believe in need for grace in our lives, I believe that God is already at work in our lives. While we ultimately need God's grace to be saved, we also need to remember that God gave us some gifts already to help in our salvation. To my knowledge Gandhi never really claimed the need for God's grace in his life. I am certain he never accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior. At the same time, can we say that he lived a life of total depravity. While I question some of the choices he made, I think he is a great example of what humanity can do. I do not want to undermine the need for grace in our lives, I just think we need to recognize that part of the grace that God gives us is simply innate in who we are. We as humans are capable of making good choices. We are not perfect, but I think like Wesley we need to aspire to perfection, and when we fall short in this life, we can trust in God's grace to help us along.

I think this is more ranting than I wanted it to be. I think that at the moment I am simply struggling for a more positive view of humanity than I often find in Christianity. I feel that we ultimately undermine ourselves by saying we are not capable of anything without God. The sort of negative language we use in our theology would be scorned in regular conversation as being overly negative, and damaging to our sense of self worth. I guess I think it is possible to believe in the greatness of God and yet to see some of that in the ways that God created humanity, to see God's grace already at work in our lives, not something we have to claim before we can be anything at all. The irony in this is that I want to talk tonight about how each of us betrays Christ in our own ways ... maybe I am not so sure what I think after all.

Bigger is Better?

2008-03-12T18:01:00.002-06:00

I was reading the book "Releasing the Power of the Smaller Church" this evening when I had an interesting though. The author of the essay I was reading was contrasting our idea that bigger is better with the powerful nature of small groups, family units, and by extension the "smaller church" (200 or less in worship). One example he had was the idea of Big Schools, which made me think of my own decision to attend Beloit College, a small liberal arts school (graduating class of about 300). During my time at Beloit there at been a real push to move the overall enrollment from about 1100 to 1200, increasing the incoming class from 320 to about 350. While I think there was other spin put on the push, in the end it came down the need/desire of the administration to increase their revenue without increasing the cost of tuition. While I understand the financial needs of the institution and the reality that colleges need at some level to function like businesses, but the more I think about it the more I think there is actually a value in growing smaller. As I think about it the reality is that I think Beloit, and many schools like it would benefit more by shifting their numbers closer to 1000 than 1200, because while there is some advantage in being larger, there is a great deal of benefit in the small intimate style of learning that a lower enrollment can allow. I would be happy, and impressed if the next push I get from my alumni association is not a request for how we can build bigger buildings, but instead how we can help the college grow smaller. At the same time I wonder if really what we as a church need to be doing is not looking at how to create more examples of mega-congregations, but instead should be looking at new ways to sustain smaller churches. Rather than placing all our emphasis on chasing the elusive dream of bigger and better, we should instead be looking at how we can help churches to grow smaller and yet also more numerous. I think what may be a more challenging and yet better goal for the Kin-dom of God is for us to look at how to expand by building out and broadening our base, not by building up the biggest and the best. I think we need to shift the paradigm. The image I will leave this post with is one I have seen outside my window a lot these evening ... huge snow flakes ... but each of these snow flakes is in fact several smaller snow flakes clumped together. Perhaps the ideal mega-congregation is not a Willow Creek, but a connection of tiny parishes connected in a great web of ministry.

Talking the Walk

2008-03-11T08:24:00.003-06:00

On Sunday I took a group of church members on a field trip down to the Cities. We visited "The Well" at Centennial UMC and also Solomon's Porch. One of the things that was most striking to the group was th way that both of these congregations talked about the mission work that they were doing. At "The Well" they are raising money to build a well in Africa. At Solomon's Porch different members talked about a mission trip to Central America as well as some work that some of them were doing in Thailand and Southeast Asia. In both cases they were willing to talk about th work that they were doing in the community and the world. The truth of the matter is that all United Methodist Churches help out around the world. It may not be a large amount, monetarily or as a percentage of their budgets, but through paying apportionments to the denomination local churches are taking part in missions. The difference is that we do not talk about it. Or if we do talk about it it tends to be with more of a tone of resentment, more along the lines of how people talk about taxes rather than missions.

In listening to the responses of my members it reinforced the need for churches in general to talk about missions. I do not say this because I think we need to be self-congratulatory or make a big deal about what we are doing. I want us to start talking about missions work because I think we need to help build on the idea that we need to be doing it. Hearing about what other people are doing in missions encourages other people to think about and participate in mission work. If we as a church do not share the stories of the work we are doing in the world then we start to forget how important that work is. By sharing the difference we make in other peoples lives we encourage each other to make a difference.

The culture we create in the church is important. What we talk about effects what kind of a church we are going to be. In most churches we seem to spend most of our announcements talking about meetings and social events. The end result is that most churches are about meetings and social events. Instead if we started talking about missions and ministry, maybe the church would be more about missions and more about ministry. In the end I think walking the walk is important, but if we don't talk it as well, then we are not going to have others join us on it. The task of discipleship, as I see it is to both walk it and talk it. And now I am done talking.

Gender and Politics

2008-03-06T10:58:00.002-06:00

I heard a comment on NPR from an old union worker in Ohio who had always vowed to never vote for a woman. He then went on to say that he voted for Clinton in the recent primary there because she had shown she was a fighter. While I am glad that this gentleman overcame his prejudice and realized that individuals of both genders have things to offer when it comes to politics, however; I am also concerned at what seems to be an underlying message of his statement. I guess what worries me is that he voted for Clinton, not because he realized that women are people too, but that Clinton did not fit into his stereotypes and so she was therefore acceptable.

I am not sure how to best express my thoughts on this without also falling into the trap of stereotypes around gender, so I will try and tread lightly. What strikes me in this man's statement and the sentiment behind it and by others like it, is the idea that men are the fighters, the hunters,the aggressive ones. Women on the other hand are talkers, compromisers, "soft" for lack of a better word. What worries me is that it seems the only way for women to get respect is to prove that they are not soft, that they can be fighters like the men. I think this is an important realization because I know a number of women, and I would probably include Clinton in that group who are fighters just like the men. My problem is that I wish that was not the only way to achieve respect. I wish what this Ohio man had realized was that there was something to be valued in people who are not fighters. Is it possible to hold a position of power and responsibility without being a fighter?

My own nonviolent tendencies and values would like to believe that it is possible for someone to acquire a position of power without the combative attributes that we tend to associate with people in power. I do not think I have the ability to parse out and breakdown every part of this hope of mine, but I would like to push forward the idea that the stereotypes associated with women ... community oriented, willing to compromise, etc which are in turn are perceived weaknesses in men, are something that needs to be valued more in this society. I am not saying that this is something that Senator Clinton needs to aspire to, I would like her to be authentic to who she is, whether that is someone who is a fighter, or compromiser. I just want society to consider the idea that not only is more than one gender capable of providing leadership to our country but that there is also more than one way of providing that leadership, and in particular some effective ways of being a leader do not fit neatly into the typical stereotypes of what it is to be a man.

I hope I spelled that all out correctly. I just wish we could find new ways of looking at things beyond the gendered stereotypes about people, power, and politics.

An unexpected windfall of/for change

2008-02-26T09:58:00.002-06:00

Recently the government united on something, that the way to help our struggling economy and the desperate times we find ourself in as a country was to give everyone money. Well as it turned out it was not everyone everyone, but still the government felt it necessary to give out rebate checks to something like 100 million households. When I first heard about this potential windfall heading my way, like most people, I started to think about all the good I could do with this money ... for myself. Some of my ideas were clearly self-serving, like getting some piece of cool new technology, but others had some greater value, like paying off some of my loans from seminary. When I thought about this some more I thought about how this could be a way to help my church out. If I gave this money to my church think about how that would help it out financially. As tempting as that was, I also realized that this money could really make a difference given to some of the many struggling charities that are bearing the brunt of the collapsing economy. Places that are struggle to meet the needs of hardworking people who just need a little more help getting by.

Out of my reflections on those topics I am starting a campaign in my congregation and I am hoping that it is something other people considering embracing, and that is using this "change" that the government is giving us to really work to change things. At Light of the Lakes we will be asking people to pledge some or even all of their government rebates to help with projects around the church or to go towards helping charities in the community. Our congregation is not that large, only 47 members, but if I did the math correctly as a group we will be getting over 20,000 from the government. That is a lot of money to make a difference with. If my math sills are to be trusted, probably some 3 million of the households receiving these rebates will be United Methodist. Which conservative would mean easily over 2 billion dollars that United Methodists could be using to make a difference in their communities. It will not buy a solution to all of the problems of the world, but it would help to show that we as Christians are committed to something greater than ourselves. It would help to reject the consumerism that captivates our nation and our world. With every major presidential candidate talking about how they are the best agent for change, I think we as Christians can demonstrate that in fact, we too can be agents of positive change in the world. Unlike the candidates, we do not need to win in order to change, all we need to do is lose our own selfish desires and let that change start to happen.

The Prophetic Power of Tolkien

2008-02-19T14:22:00.003-06:00

I have heard arguments about the Christian imagery that Tolkien wove into the Lord of the Rings books, and I have heard theories about how the books were meant as a commentary on the politics of his day. But what I find most intriguing is how contained in his stories are some very prophetic words for the church.

"Kings made tombs more splendid than the houses of the living and counted the names of their descent more dear than their sons. Childless lords sat in ageless halls musing on heaven or in high cold towers asking questions of the stars." (roughly transcribed from the extended version of "The Return of the King")

While Gandalf is referring to the fall of Gondor when he makes these statements, I think has some strength when applied to the church as well. I think there is a strong temptation in the church to think more about building up our halls of worship, our altars, and our memorials than we give thought to the needs of the members and the surrounding community. And while Tolkien was unaware of it at the time, the mainline church in the United States as faced a similar decline over the years, constantly looking to the past and our membership lists and confirmation photos from years past rather than thinking to the future and how we are called to continue the church. I just realize how little we think in the church about creating new churches, about giving birth to something new, and instead tend to focus on our legacy, our traditions, or simply on maintaining the crumbling structures (both physical and perhaps spiritual) of our denominations. I believe that we look to the stars for the magic answer, like Gondor we await the coming of the King, the perfect pastor, who will lead us back to our heyday, rather than actively seeking that return for ourselves. I watched the Return of the King last weekend on my day off (it really does take a whole day to do it) and was just overwhelmed with a desire to work for renewal and I wanted to share that with all my avid, or at least somewhat regular readers.

Meaing what we say or saying what we mean

2008-02-14T10:52:00.003-06:00

One of the participants in the Gospel According to Starbuck's small groups I am running brought up an interesting challenge to me. She shared that it is hard for her to always say the call to worship because it does not always feel like something she is in the right frame of mind to say. For example, on a day when she is feeling down, to say that she is rejoicing in the Lord may not be true. Rather than reflecting her feelings, the prayers and call to worship seem to speak the mind of someone else. Her challenge and one that has really got me thinking is, how do we find authentic ways for people to participate in worship in way that is both real to them and yet fits with the theme and mood of worship. In more ritualized services, the words work well to create the mood and to pull people into a sense of worship. Is it better to try and have the prayer and everything create that right frame of mind. If the focus of the service is peace and justice, certainly having prayers centered around that can help create the mood for people, but is there a good way to let people acknowledge that they are not in that place. For me corporate prayers allow the congregation to participate in worship, but maybe they fail to actually let people say where they are at, and instead merely become a reflection of my mood when I am writing the prayers.

As I think about the structure of worship at Light of the Lakes UMC, it seems to me that maybe I am going about things the wrong way. There are two opportunities for people to express and/or let go of the things they are struggling with at the moment. We have a time of centering prayer and we have a time of joys, concerns, and "God sightings" (where people share how they have seen God in their lives in the last week). Both of these fall more to the middle of the service, the centering prayer comes after the call to worship and three songs; joys and concerns follow the sermon. Maybe what is really need is to move on of these to the very front of worship, so that people have a moment to shift their focus, lift up those things they are struggling with, and allow themselves to move into an attitude of worship.

I think what I continue to struggle with is the challenge of merging both the needs of the individual and the needs and feelings of the community. Finding a way to make corporate worship authentica and meaningful to the whole church and the church as a whole.

Jamming for Jesus?

2008-02-07T11:04:00.000-06:00

In I think the first Harry Potter book, J.K. Rowling talks about the Hogwarts school song what is notable about the song is not the bizarre words, but the way the song is sung. Dumbledore starts the song and each person then sets off to singing it at their own pace, with their own tune. In their usual flippant and attention grabbing manner, the Weasley twins chose a funeral dirge, and so finish much after everyone else. Recently I have been trying to figure out how to capture the spirit of the Hogwarts song and make it work in worship. In particular I am thinking about the ability to allow for individuality and diversity. I am currently puzzling over the idea of the jam session, where people simply gather to make music that is spontaneous, authentic and lacking the polish of a performance but instead capturing the spirit and energy of the musicians. I want to have a worship service that is not meant to be judged on its technical merits, but instead to be judged on how it speaks to and from the souls of those who are gathered there. Relatively spontaneous and individual modes of worship work when you have outgoing, unabashedly outspoken people like the Weasley twins, but are not helpful for people as a whole. How do we help people to find their own voice in worship? How do make room for those who are still just wanting to hear what others have to say? It seems like a lot of the challenge I am facing, though I hope I am wrong, is that when it comes to worship, we as pastors have spent years, if not centuries performing for people rather than inviting other to jam with us. Our good intentions have served only to infantilize our members and teach them to watch and not to act. Maybe I am painting with too broad a brush, but I know that I for one have been guilty of this. The challenge for me now is to figure out how to give that voice back to the people and to affirm the role that each person has in the act of worship

A Need to Be Involved

2008-02-04T15:16:00.000-06:00

I have been reading and really enjoying the book "The Gospel According to Starbuck's" by Leonard Sweet. One of the things he comments on is the increased need for people to participate in something rather than just be spectators. He points out that American Idol, which asks people to vote is hugely popular whereas most major sports struggle to retain their audiences. He also notes that things like Fantasy Football help to provide interaction instead of simply being a spectator. Part of me finds this hard to believe, even as a young adult, someone who is supposed to fit into these stereotypes, I watch sports and enjoy the spectator part. On further consideration however I realized that my sports watching has grown as I started to do Fantasy Football. Perhaps the thing that hit home the most to me was watching the Super Bowl last night with my youth group. In the final 2 minutes 30 seconds of the games, which is a fair amount of real time, but still not a huge amount, one of my youth sent 300+ text messages in an attempt to have Laurence Marooney voted as the MVP for the game. For him watching the game was fine, but what made it better was the fact that he could have a small influence on some part of the action, he was enjoying getting to be a part of things. Not sure what to do with this anecdote yet ... but it does reinforce the fact that churches need to make sure we are finding ways to engage people, not simply intellectually, or as spectators, but as active participants in worship and all other areas of ministry.

The Breast Plate of Aaron

2008-01-31T10:46:00.000-06:00

In 2006 I got a book from the Bishop to encourage daily devotions, it was basically a journal with a space to write some prayers and a guide for reading through the Bible in a year. Each year since I have attempted to use this book as a way of encouraging good Bible reading habits. This year I started late, so I actually skipped most of January rather than try and scramble to catch up as I was just getting started with my new healthy Bible reading habit. This is probably fine since I made it through all of January the last two times I did this anyway. The guide basically has a person reading from one book in the Hebrew Bible and one book from the New Testament at the same time. So as I started on this project I jumped into the beginning of the book of Acts and the middle of Exodus. For the last two days I have been experiencing the fascinating tension of reading about the church in Acts and its struggles with the established religious authorities at the same time as I have been reading about the establishment of the religious authorities in Exodus. In particular I have been reading through the 5+ chapters that detail the Temple, the priestly class, and how to make the vestments of Aaron and his sons.

I am never sure what to do with the details of Exodus 25-29, while important historically, I cannot see how they help the Church today. Is there value in attaching ourselves to the symbols of the past? What do we do with the bloody nature of the early rituals? How does all of this relate to the sermon of Stephen in Acts 7 where he seems to emphasize that one of the largest fallacies of the Jewish tradition is that God can be contained in a temple. Without the need for a temple is there a need for a priestly class and priestly ritual? I guess what I am pondering right now, and have done almost every year, is beyond historical value, what can be gained from the descriptions of the ancient traditions of the Jewish faith, for Christians or for Jews. Just one more thing to think about.

21st Century Rosary

2008-01-30T09:12:00.000-06:00

I remember reading an article somewhere that talked about how men tend to compartmentalize relationships more than women do. Women tend to want someone, especially their spouses, to be the primary source for most things. Men on the other hand tend to break things down more, there is the friend you watch football with, or the person you vent about politics with, no one person needs to meet every need, even the your spouse. As I look at my own life this makes some sense n how I live my life and so on. I can remember one particular instance when I was really having a hard time with something and needed support. I remember pulling out my cell phone and flipping through my directory, looking at each name, trying to decide who would best understand what I was going through, who could give me the right kind of support.

I was thinking about this event the other day, and realizing that it provided me with an excellent idea for a 21st Century rosary, not that there is something wrong with the age old version. I have not yet done it yet, but I think it would be an interesting spiritual discipline to take out a cell phone everyone now and again and pray through it, pausing at each contact to say a pray for them. It seems to me it would help in remembering our interconnectedness and I find it easier to ask things for other people than I do for myself. I am not sure if it is something that would be doable on really regular basis, but I think it is worth trying and some point and would be curious if others tried it what they thought.

Getting Old

2008-01-28T11:26:00.000-06:00

I am 26, going on 27 and I am well aware that by most people's standards I am not old. However, I am still at a point where I can begin to feel the effects of age, or really the fact that I am leaving the critical time period of an athlete that is the late teens and early twenties. A week ago I went cross-country skiing with my family and some of this was brought home to me. I simply do not have the same level of fitness I had four or five years ago. Some of this is a factor of a job that involves lots of sitting and lots of potlucks. Some of it is a factor of the fact that try as I might I am not good at exercising regularly, and some of it is just the reality that I have not skied in years. While my skiing experience brought to mind my current lack of conditioning, the more telling point for me was about two months ago when I fenced for the first time in probably 18 months. In case my readers are wondering, I am referring to the Olympic sport of fencing, not the act of putting up fences, nor the selling of illegal goods on the black market. I fenced actively all through college and even during seminary. In the midst of this there are several times that I engaged in highly intense and fatiguing fencing tournaments, fencing while sick, fencing on little to no sleep, etc. That being said, when I fenced again after so long a break in November, I had a unique experience for me, I was actually unable to do what I wanted to do. Fencing usually has a great adrenaline producing effect for me, allowing me to overcome many of the physical hardships I listed above, however on this occasion, as willing and fired up as my spirit was, my body was simply not able to do all the things I wanted it to do. As with the cross-country skiing last week, when I needed the body to perform it sent back a reply of "no." Which leads me back to my statement of me getting old, which is where I think this post gets interesting.

Getting old in fencing is not actually a bad thing, in general, while younger fencers tend to be more athletic, energetic, and otherwise "good", older fencers, especially the good ones, have something going for them that most younger fencers are severely deficient in, wisdom. When I fence someone younger than me, I often find they tend to really heavily on the knowledge that they can do whatever they need to to win. Older fencers are far more dangerous, because they know they cannot do whatever needed to win. Older fencers know their limits, which makes them harder to fence. One of the things I am realizing as I get more and more involved in my ministry is that the sooner I know my limits, the better off I will be. Now I know there is a danger in overstating one's limits, so that a person, or a congregation, does not think they can do anything, but at the same time, I think there is great value in knowing what it is we can do well, and knowing what is we need to ask for help on, whether that is asking God, or our neighbor, or just knowing that this is something we should not do.

I am getting old, I just hope I can gain some of the wisdom needed to survive along the way.