Brand Identity

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

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?

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

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

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?)

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

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.