November 8, 2009

This kind of explains why I feel instant anger when someone puts pressure on me to go to church because it’s what I “should” be doing. Or when people say that I need to be “volunteering” specifically at church. (The idea of “volunteering” at the church is another realm of frustration for me…we’ll talk about that another time…) Give me a break! I’m open to being challenged on this, but until someone can present a valid argument, I will be at home most Sunday mornings, doing things that connect me with God and give me perspective, growth, and strength. (And yes I realize that there are a lot of “I” and “me” in there…I feel like I get my corporate worship elsewhere right now.)

Church gatherings were never the intended goal; they were the natural result of people finding others who were living their alternative Kingdom story. The goal of our missional life is not to grow churches. The goal of church is to grow missionaries. The goal of the gospel is not to get people to church. The result of the gospel is that people will find each other and gather because of the deep meaning of a common experience.

In Hebrews 10:24-25, we have the only direct encouragement for people to gather: “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another.” We must realize that this was not a plea for people to get their lazy fannies out of bed, put their Sunday paper down, postpone their family trip out to the lake, put on their Sunday best, and get to church. It was an encouragement for early Christians who feared for their lives, who were hiding in dark alleys, who were seeing their friends killed, and who weren’t gathering because of great persecution. It was a plea for people to defy their fears and draw together with others who were living life in the margins of society, who were on a common mission, and who were in desperate need of being encouraged by the stories of others whose lives were in peril because of the gospel. People were naturally dispersed because of mission, and the gathering was their way to hear the faithful stories of others.

…when people are bent on mission first, the gathering takes on different purposes. We have found that when the primary values are outward mission and incarnational life, the gathering becomes more about connecting people, corporate storytelling, vision casting, and celebration. In settings where the church service is the main thing, Bible teaching, singing, prayer, and ministry to people becomes the priority…I do feel it’s important for God’s voice to be heard through scripture in corporate settings, but we do this with a sense of God speaking vision into our collective mission rather than for personal self-help.
- Hugh Halter & Matt Smay in The Tangible Kingdom

Ya, “personal self-help” rings a bell…I’ve heard this said of the church I am committed to, but rarely attend. I really am committed to my church, and I really don’t buy that my lack of attendance makes that any less true. Anyway, I’d reeeeeally like to be a part of the church that these authors talk about, or actually just get to sit in on how they do things for a week or a month. They do kind of give ideas in the book about how to do this on your own, but I know that I’m not good at getting things like this started. And quite honestly, it gets tiring to keep trying new things and never have them work out. It seems like it takes a lot more energy to go and really be the church together in a tangible kind of way instead of making the church services the thing that we try and improve, the goal, the big event, the thing that gets the focus, the money, the attention. Bleh. Drives me nuts. I like the idea that the gathering is the natural result of people who are living incarnationally. I know that’s idealistic. That’s where I live, people.

April 15, 2009

Now, I hesitate most of the time to say anything about the marginalization or inequality of women because many times it seems like people roll their eyes and write me off.  I get grouped in with those crazy feminists…When I talk about the equality or inequality of women, I’m not saying women need to be “above” men or considered to be “greater than” or anything like that.  What I think is that men and women cannot function properly, society can’t function properly, unless the fundamental equality of men and women is acknowledged and practiced.  And if we think that that is happening already, we have been fooled.  This is not a woe-is-me thing.  It is a desire for truth and justice.  ANYHOO enough about that from my brain for now…I’m reading this book FINALLY called “She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse” by Elizabeth Johnson and I totally can’t wait to get into it a bit more.  I’ve read a few pages so far, and here is some stuff that I couldn’t agree with more:

Speech about God shapes the life orientation not only of the corporate faith community but in this matrix guides its individual members as well…The women’s movement in civil society and the church has shed a bright light on the pervasive exclusion of women from the realm of public symbol formation and decision making, and women’s consequent, strongly enforced subordination to the imagination and needs of a world designed chiefly by men.  In the church this exclusion has been effective virtually everywhere: in ecclesial creeds, doctrines, prayers, theological systems, liturgical worship, patterns of spirituality, visions of mission, church order, leadership and discipline.  It has been stunningly effective in speech about God.  While officially it is rightly and consistently said that God is spirit and so beyond identification with either male or female sex, yet the daily language of preaching, worship, catechesis, and instruction conveys a different message: God is male, or at least more like a man than a woman, or at least more fittingly addressed as a male than as a female.  Upon examination it becomes clear that this exclusive speech about God serves in manifold ways to support an imaginative and structural world that excludes or subordinates women.

I really believe that this is true.  Take, for example, the book “The Shack”.  Someone makes a suggestion that perhaps God is female, and Christians all over the place lose their minds.  Take, for another example, how often when people refer to God as “she” they feel like they need to explain themselves.  It’s all silly, really.  Silly in a growth-stunting kind of way.  Stay tuned for more…

April 9, 2009

I read a book while I was away called Jesus Wants to Save Christians.  Rob Bell and someone else are the authors.  I’ve been meaning to read this book for a long long time and finally got to it.  Because I didn’t have to read a bunch of school-related books.  Say it with me now – holy shit I’m done!!  Anyway, the book was okay and there were a few really interesting things in there.  In general, it has once again fuelled my frustration with churches and with Christians in general.  Adding to that fire is the billboard I drive by every morning on my way to work that is advertising some Bible Prophecy Conference.  Aaaaaarg.  When I really separate myself from and think about church and churches and our little Christian subculture, it boggles my mind.  I mean, in one sense I love the church – if by “church” we are talking the Body of Christ.  I think that that is our community, a source of life.  That church I love.  The church that non-church people observe and the things they see us doing are pretty unusual, and I do not believe they are at all what being the Body is about.  I wish I had that book with me right now…I’d throw down a few quotes for you from it.  Some specific things I remember are some things they said about the book of Revelation and how we make that into information about “end times” but how it’s really not about that.  Like for example, when John says don’t take the mark of the beast, he’s talking to people in that day in that culture about the mark – which all had to do with the economy and merchants and buying and selling.  You needed the mark to participate in the screwed up economy.  Another random example is this: When Jesus said “Do this in remembrance of me” he wasn’t necessarily talking about communion…he may have been talking about the way he lived – his whole way of life.  I like new ways of thinking about these things because we are so marinated in our old ways of thinking about them that we start to think that those old ways are THE way…This would be a much better post if I actually had that little book with me…anyhoo, the point of it all is that I think Christians are weird sometimes…I think the institution of the church is very weird.  And that’s where it all ends because I certainly don’t have the answer or too many solutions.  Yet. 

I have another book on my shelf to read soon that’s called “Christianity’s Dangerous Idea” by Alister McGrath…don’t know anything about the book, found it in the bargain section at McNally.  But from what I gather, part of it is about how what we have done to Christianity is pretty ridiculous.  Like, for instance, how we are taught to think that the Bible is to be read on our own, to ourselves, by ourselves, for ourselves when it fact it is meant for communities, spoken to communities, etc. etc.  We make all of these things so individualistic…what else would we do when that is the dominant theme of our culture.  There seems to be a lot of history stuff in this book which does not always capture my attention, but in this case it might be pretty interesting.  I think we’re off track by a ways so anything that brings me new info. is welcome.  Anyway…gotta get back to some work!