May 30, 2008

You Walk (with God) Wrong

In a recent issue of New York magazine, Adam Sternbergh accuses, "You Walk Wrong." And I can't help but think that his insight into feet has spiritual application for Western Christians.

As the title suggests, Sternbergh claims that none of us walks correctly. But it's not our fault; it's shoes. "Shoes are bad," he claims. In fact, he cites researcher William Rossi as saying, "Natural gait is biomechanically impossible for any shoe-wearing person." After comparing the feet of 180 people from different cultures, along with a few feet from 2,000-year-old skeletons, researchers concluded that feet were healthier before shoes became fashionable (the skeleton feet were better off). And people who don't wear shoes - Zulus, in this case - have healthier feet than we Westerners. Athletes who wear cheaper, less padded, shoes have fewer injuries. Elderly people with back, knee, and hip problems report less pain when barefoot. This is, to oversimplify, because feet absorb shock better than shoes (because they flex) and because we walk lighter when barefoot (because we can feel the ground).

Growing up, I loved the feeling of shag carpet and cool mud between my toes and feeling the earth as God made it, with all its points and sharp edges. So I was particularly pleased at Sternbergh's conclusion: that our feet - and the rest of our ambulating parts by extension - are healthier when we avoid the temptation to wrap them in foam. Lacing up to avoid the momentary discomforts of walking unshod causes long-term problems, because although our feet adjust to walking without shoes, our joints never adjust to walking with them.

Now for the spiritual application.

Our culture is determined to mediate its own experiences, so that we feel what we want when we want. That explains my frustration with NetFlix. Who knows what kind of mood I'll be in by the time I get a movie in the mail? Will I want to laugh or think or cry on Friday evening two weeks from now? Or to take another example, when my wife brings up a difficult conversation (like the family budget) at an inconvenient time, I'm tempted to say, "I can't deal with this right now." It's as if I have some right to determine when to face difficulty and what emotions to engage.

This impulse appears in broader Christian culture. The title of a book by the bestselling author of Boundaries (Zondervan, 2002) says it all: Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't (Zondervan, 1996). We've learned to protect ourselves with spiritual gifts inventories: "I'm afraid I can't help in the youth group; it's not my gift." We consider things edifying if they reinforce what we think, not if they unsettle us (I had this conversation with Christians concerning Pedro the Lion.)

Churches, too, can further insulate their members by catering to these tendencies. Instead of encouraging parishioners to submit to the congregation, an elder, or mentor, churches often teach them to self-diagnose and self-prescribe their spiritual formation regimen. Or they offer a variety of service times and styles to prevent congregants from making difficult (and formative) decisions about priorities.

When you walk without the insulation of shoes, you don't have the privilege of deciding when to tread rocky ground or cool mud or warm sand. But that's just what makes our feet resilient. We take the rough terrain when it comes and learn balance in the process. Similarly, if I lived without spiritual insulation, I would learn balance by adjusting my stride to account for difficulties when they arise, not by avoiding them until I'm ready to face them. My spiritual feet would toughen and I would be healthier for it.

What's the solution? Spiritual disciplines are a great place to start. We can slip off our shoes and maneuver uncomfortable ground through fasting, silence, and giving. Over time - according to the saints who do this sort of thing - you find the periods of discipline more natural than indulgence, and your feet stay bare more often.

For myself, I've found liturgical worship and following the Church calendar to do much the same thing. Pentecost Sunday - regardless of how I feel about my finances or family issues - is a cause for celebration. I may not feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, but I am directed to rejoice in it nonetheless. Conversely, whatever my personal victories, Good Friday is a time to mourn.

In The Gift of Pain (Zondervan, 1993) Paul Brand (with Philip Yancey), explains that insensitivity to pain has serious medical consequences:

Without this chorus of pain, a leprosy patient lives in constant peril. He will wear too-tight shoes all day. He will walk five, ten, fifteen miles without changing gait or shifting weight. And?even if sores break open inside his shoe, he will not limp.

Does the same not apply to our souls? What do we risk by ignoring the "indispensable protection of pain?"

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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 30, 2008 | Comments (12)

May 29, 2008

Out of Context: James Gilmore

"To me, the church should not aim to be 'real' as an end. The church is there to proclaim truth. Trying to be hip and cool and real does a disservice to the church. We're not called to be successful. We're called to be obedient, even if they don't come.... If somebody doesn't find you objectionable, I wonder if you're preaching the full counsel of God."

-James Gilmore is co-author of Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want (Harvard Business School Press, 2007). Taken from "Keeping It Real" in the Spring 2008 issue of Leadership journal. To see the quote IN context, you'll need to see the print version of Leadership. To subscribe, click on the cover of Leadership on this page.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 29, 2008 | Comments (24)

May 28, 2008

Audio Ur: Tim Keller's Gospel

Is there only one gospel? And what is the difference between the gospel message and the implications of that message? Can we preach one without the other?

In this podcast Skye Jethani , David Swanson , and Matt Tebbe discuss Tim Keller's article in the Spring issue of Leadership, "The Gospel in All its Forms."

To download this episode of Audio Ur, click here.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 28, 2008 | Comments (3)

May 27, 2008

Why We're Rethinking the Gospel

Our friends over at Preaching Today have launched a new series on preaching the gospel. They're asking, "Is our gospel too small, or is it too big?" and "What does it mean to preach the gospel in today's culture." They've begun with an interview with Leadership's own Skye Jethani. Below is an excerpt. You can read the entire interview here.

Preaching Today: A number of Christian authors, pastors, and theologians are raising critical questions about our understanding of the nature of the gospel. What do you think has stirred such passion?

Skye Jethani: A lot of passion has been fueled by the angst produced from conversations about how to reach younger, postmodern generations. Two schools of thought emerged from the beginning. One group opted for the conservative approach: we just need to be more relevant, repackaging the same gospel message in a manner or style that's going to be appealing to the next generation. Another group insisted the church needed to go deeper than repackaging the content. They felt we needed to rethink the content. A lot of today's conversations about the gospel were born out of the early tension between the two schools of thought.

Our gospel arsenal is a lot bigger than it used to be. We can choose to preach the Good News from a number of different angles, according to the audience we've been given.These two groups were not unlike the two groups that formed during the modernist/fundamentalist split that happened a hundred years ago. Think about the massive cultural changes that were going on: Darwinism, Marxism, textual criticism of the Bible, psychology. Many Christians looked at that tangled mess and concluded they needed to adjust the gospel. In doing so they ended up forming mainline, liberal theology. The fundamentalists among them said, "I don't care what's happening to the culture. The gospel's the gospel, and we're not changing it!"

It's quite similar today. One side prides themselves on not changing the gospel but only the style in which it is preached. In their eyes, anyone who adjusts their perspective on the gospel represents a new liberalism. The other side responds with a certain degree of disdain over what they feel is stodgy fundamentalism blind to its own modernist bias.

Another factor that explains why we're currently engaged in gospel-oriented conversations is the revival of interest in spiritual formation. Decades ago, Richard Foster and others at Renovar? were not asking, "How do we reach younger generations?" They were asking questions like: "Why aren't we seeing Christians living in Christ-like ways?" "Why is the church so culturally captivated?" "If we've been preaching the gospel all these years, why aren't we seeing much change in people?" Their conclusion was that we had been preaching a limited gospel - one that didn't bring about radical transformation. Foster and others were questioning whether or not we were preaching a gospel of transformation for the here and now and not just for life after death.

Read the full interview at PreachingToday.com.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 27, 2008 | Comments (18)

May 26, 2008

Cartoon: Team Leadership

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 26, 2008 | Comments (2)

May 23, 2008

Defending Depravity

A century and a half ago, Herman Melville (he wrote Moby Dick, but don't hold that against him) observed, "In certain moods, no man can weigh this world without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance." It's remarkable to me that even today artists often come to the same conclusion: human experience doesn't quite make sense without some provision for inborn and radical evil. Even Hollywood has explored this theme in recent years. There Will Be Blood is a chilling story of humanity's incorrigible greed. Cormac McCarthy's novel (and the Cohen brothers' movie) No Country for Old Men deals directly with the concept of incarnate evil through Anton Chigurh, a villain who toys with human life mostly out of boredom. Apparently screenwriters are beginning to ask questions novelists have been asking for years.

G. K. Chesterton called sin "a fact as practical as potatoes" and original sin "the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved." Of course, not everyone takes it so seriously. Comedian Eddie Izzard calls it a "hellish idea. People have to go, ?Father, bless me for I?did an original sin. I poked a badger with a spoon.'" And there are those, too, like Oprah and Eckhart Tolle, who think too highly of human potential to entertain the idea of depravity.

But it's not only non-believers who lampoon the doctrine. Many Christians consider it an Augustinian idiosyncrasy that unfortunately made its way into Christian dogma - the invention of a guilt-ridden philanderer. An appeal to Martin Luther is little help; he'd no doubt be on antidepressants were he alive today.

However you feel about it, though, either embracing or rejecting the doctrine has its consequences. In his new book, Original Sin: A Cultural History (HarperOne, 2008), Alan Jacobs shows how a society's position on the doctrine affects everything from child rearing and education to law making and the formation of government.

Surely there are religious consequences as well. It seems to me that how we think about ourselves will have direct implications for how we understand discipleship. If we think we're basically all right at the core, then Jesus will be for us a sort of life coach to smooth off our rough edges and help us make good choices. But if we suspect that we humans are deeply and ontologically flawed, then we can understand what Paul means when he says that those who are in Christ are new creations.

Should we strive to become the best possible versions of ourselves, or altogether new persons? When you put it that way, most of us will say, "New persons, clearly." After all, evangelicals have a reputation for taking sin seriously. On paper, most of us affirm some version of original sin.

But what we prescribe says an awful lot about how we actually understand our illness. Take Joyce Meyer, for example (her new book showed up on my desk recently). According to Joyce, The Secret to True Happiness (Faith Words, 2008) is to "Laugh a Lot," "Get Some Rest," and "Keep It Simple," among other things. If that's all the medicine broken humans need, then we must not be so bad off after all.

It's easy to pick on someone like Joyce or the inimitable Joel Osteen. And it's become fairly popular - wrongly, I'd say - to criticize emerging Christians for being soft on sin. But what do our ministry paradigms and church programs and sermon series suggest about our understanding of human sinfulness? Do we merely treat symptoms with five steps to financial freedom or six ways to divorce-proof your marriage? If we think all we need are tips and strategies, and not radical transformation, are we really taking sinfulness seriously? If not, then can we really take Jesus seriously? We - myself included - excuse all sorts of behavior by saying, "That's just how God made me." We think we can do anything if we just believe in ourselves. Certainly we're made in the image of God. But do we take seriously enough that the image has been distorted?

It takes a bit of imagination to envision ministry built with a robust sense of fallenness as a starting point. Especially if you hope to avoid browbeating. I'm not advocating for "all your good deeds are filthy rags" and "dangling over a yawning hell by a shoe string" Christianity. I got my fill of that growing up. And I'm not promoting a Calvinist view of total depravity. You don't need one to recognize that we humans are not what we were made to be (see the Eastern Orthodox Church, for example). But what would the American church look like if we began to acknowledge that it will take more than programs and education, more than community and fellowship, more than doctrinal precision and striving to restore shalom in Creation to make us disciples?

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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 23, 2008 | Comments (70)

May 22, 2008

Out of Context: Alan Hirsch

"This divorce of APE (Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist) from ST (Shepherd, Teacher) has been disastrous for the local church and has damaged the cause of Christ and his mission. In my opinion, this contraction of fivefold to twofold ministry is one of the main factors in the decline of evangelical Christianity in the West. If we want a vibrant missional church, we simply have to have a missional leadership structure with all five functions engaged. It's that simple!"

-Alan Hirsch is a leader of the Forge Mission Training Network in Australia, and author of The Forgotten Ways (Brazos, 2007). Taken from "Three Over-Looked Leadership Roles" in the Spring 2008 issue of Leadership journal. To see the quote IN context, you'll need to see the print version of Leadership. To subscribe, click on the cover of Leadership on this page.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 22, 2008 | Comments (2)

May 21, 2008

Audio Ur: From Top-Down to Team Leadership

The theme for current issue of Leadership is "Teams," and that is the subject of our first Out of Ur podcast. Teams have always been a critical part of ministry going back to the 12 unlikely men Jesus assembled and then sent out in pairs to reach the villages of Judea. But today teams are taking on new significance.

In this podcast Skye Jethani (managing editor of Leadership), David Swanson (Community Life Pastor at New Community Covenant Church in Chicago), and Matt Tebbe (pastor of Life on the Vine Christian Community in Long Grove, Illinois) discuss the ministry implications of team leadership based on the recent interview with The Next Level Church in Denver.

To download this episode of Audio Ur, click here.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 21, 2008 | Comments (4)

May 20, 2008

Jesus is Not a CEO

Beware of any literature that starts with these words: "Jesus was the greatest leader of all time." The sentiment behind those words may be true, but the point they make is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if Jesus was the greatest leader of all time. Jesus is our leader (and, in a holy sense, we're stuck with him).

The issue at hand is far from nit-picky. Evangelicals have long been accused of domesticating Jesus - making him one of "us" (often white, middle-class, socially respectable, and politically conservative). The glut of Jesus-as-leader books runs a tremendous risk as it attempts to introduce Jesus into the economy that surrounds 21st century leadership.

Jesus the leader endangers our view of Jesus the savior. Frankly, Jesus the leader is less threatening. He's an organizational director that would fit in wearing business casual and sitting in a conference room. I believe wholeheartedly that Jesus wants to control how I behave, think, and lead in when I'm in the conference room, but I don't have much confidence in Jesus as the teacher of strategic leadership lessons.

I'd like to get back to Jesus the savior, the one who sends the Holy Spirit to lead us. I'd like to bring the Jesus-as-leader genre of books along with me. I have a number of such books on my shelf right now. Several of them misrepresent Jesus the Messiah as Jesus the executive director; the others more or less get him right.

The major problem with the books that get him wrong occurs in the area of interpretation. Take John 10:10, Jesus saying, "I came that they might have life and have it abundantly." Let's evaluate the reflection on that verse published in Jesus, CEO: Using Ancient Wisdom for Visionary Leadership:

Many times leaders and managers expect their employees to leap through the flames for them but do not define what the purpose or reward will be. Then they wonder why nobody is leaping?. As Harry Pickens, a marketing seminar leader, said, "People are tuned in to one station: WIFM. And those letters stand for "What's in it for me?"

Jesus clearly defined his staff's work-related benefits.

No. Jesus was not demonstrating any principle about the year-end bonus, revenue sharing, or 401(k) matching. In the cosmic battle between God and Satan, John 10:10 sets up Jesus, the sacrificial Good Shepherd, against Satan, the thief. Jesus wasn't talking about - and never meant to imply - anything about "work-related benefits."

Reading the Gospels for leadership principles like team building, vision casting, or "seeing the potential in others" makes a mockery of authorial intent and historical-cultural backgrounds. Such readings appear to take the Bible seriously, but they don't do it justice; they simply create anachronistic interpretations. Could Jesus-as-leader book be flirting with recreating Jesus as one of us (or one of who we hope to be)?

Jesus has much to say to leaders, but we (especially those of us who lead) can only hear him clearly when we remember that Jesus is not primarily a leader. He is God's Anointed One, the Suffering Servant, the prophet greater than Moses.

The Christian leadership books that get Jesus right operate in that realm, never assuming that there is a "leaders track" in discipleship. Instead, they believe there to be a "servants track" for all Christ-followers. Our leadership books should move us toward this, challenging us to go down to Jesus' level, not attempting to bring him up to ours. As Henri Nouwen writes in In the Name of Jesus: "I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in the world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self."

That resonates with Jesus' teaching about leadership in Mark 10: "?[T]hose who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all."

Contrast those quotes with this (albeit cherry picked) reflection on Jesus' "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" statement in Mark 2:27, appearing in a forthcoming book on leadership. The context is stagnant "traditions" in organizational cultures:

Whether your area of leadership is home, school, church, civic? or business, how you handle the traditions that exist will help to determine how effective you are as a leader. A good manager makes the existing system work to his or her advantage; a good leader questions the system, making the changes necessary for improvement. In Jesus, the old things have passed and all things have become new.

Brothers and sisters: Yes. Great leaders challenge the status quo. Let us do that.

Brothers and sisters who hold the Scriptures in high regard: That is not what Jesus wants us to get out of the "Lord of the Sabbath" teaching.

Jesus' defiance of first-century tradition is not a justification for us to defy our church's traditions. They may need to be challenged, and good leaders will do so; indeed, may we. The statement "In Jesus, the old things have passed and all things have become new" is not a principle for us to take into our management portfolios; it is a statement that the world has been re-ordered in Christ. It is a truth that stands above and beyond a leadership strategy.

Let's move back toward Christian leadership studies that move us this direction. Let me propose a few criteria for the next book any of us pick up (or write) about Jesus as a leader:

1. Try to find one in which Christ is not first-and-foremost a leader with a message for you, but rather a savior who loved the world enough to die for it.

2. Seek one that takes the Bible so seriously that it dare not misrepresent the teachings and actions of Jesus.

3. Make sure it is distinctly Christian - not full of principles that could have been thought up by Jim Collins's crackerjack research team.

4. Let it be consumed with the idea of servanthood.

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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 20, 2008 | Comments (27)

May 16, 2008

Church Celebrity Deathmatch

I haven't seen MTV in years, with no regrets, but I recall a show on the network that impacted me like a train wreck. It was awful, gruesome, and terrible - but I couldn't look away. "Celebrity Deathmatch" featured clay-animated celebrities in a wrestling ring where they pummeled, grinded, or dismembered each other into a bloody pulp of scarlet Play-Doh. It wasn't exactly wholesome family entertainment.

We can pick apart the moral depravity of the show (which is all too easy), or we can talk about why it was so popular with the young (which is probably related to its moral depravity). Let's simply draw this conclusion - the younger generation isn't enamored with celebrities. They aren't cultural gods to be worshiped and respected. They're more like rodeo clowns trying not to be impaled by the paparazzi beasts we unleash to devour them for our own entertainment.

The anti-celebrity sentiment of the younger generation, and the culture as a whole, may be taking root in the church as well. There are two seemingly opposite trends occurring among evangelicals that relate to this. One is the movement away from hierarchical leadership structures. The other is the movement toward hierarchical leadership structures. Let me explain.

The spring issue of Leadership includes an interview with the pastoral team at The Next Level Church in Denver. After building a booming church around the dynamic gifts of a senior pastor, TNL imploded. The senior pastor/preacher left amid controversy and the church's attendance dropped like Wiley Coyote from a cliff. In the aftermath, the remaining pastors reorganized TNL sans senior pastor. They've opted for a team approach with leaders sharing equal authority and responsibility.

They're not alone. Other young church leaders are forgoing the traditional senior pastor model. They prefer a flattened structure with shared responsibility where a team, rather then an individual, has the steering wheel. Thus no one achieves celebrity status in the congregation. Even in next-gen churches with a visible leader there is a trend away from the "Senior Pastor" title. The reason is linked to the scary rate of failure seen among senior pastors. Like "Celebrity Deathmatch," the evangelical church seems littered with the corpses of leaders who've been beaten beyond recovery.

Brian Gray from The Next Level Chuch says, "I wasn't at TNL during that crisis, but I also saw a senior pastor model entirely fall apart at my previous church. It got really bad. I began thinking there had to be a better way to do church. There is something systemically unhealthy about becoming dependent upon a single leader."

Having a single "face with the place," a senior pastor who fills the pulpit and whose personality permeates the entire congregation, has been the popular model for evangelicals, but these ecclesial celebrities crash and burn at a rate greater than a sub-Saharan airline. As Gray points out, the problem is the system and not just the pastors. So many younger evangelicals are seeking churches liberated from the celebrity death spiral.

But this is only half of the phenomenon.

In my area we are seeing a striking number of younger evangelicals move toward high-church traditions - particularly Anglican. This has been discussed in the pages of Christianity Today as well as U.S. News & World Report. Some are calling it the "return to ritual." At first glance one might see this as being completely out of phase with the trend outlined above. After all, high church traditions are all about structure and hierarchy. There are priests, and bishops, and even archbishops.

But a closer examination reveals that this trend may also be coming from the same discontentment with personality-driven congregations. Anglican worship is built on a time-honored liturgy that emphasizes prayer, Scripture, and the Eucharist. While preaching is certainly present, the preacher and his/her personality does not dominate corporate worship. The same could be said of the worship leader. Personality takes a backseat to tradition.

Similarly, while some churches are trying to minimize risk through a team structure, high-church traditions protect congregations from the failures of a single leader through a hierarchy that stretches far above the local church. This is one example where the much-derided denomination still has an advantage over non-denominational churches.

What does all of this mean? Here are a few thoughts. First, a lot of churches are itching to jump on the liturgy bandwagon. They think that incorporating these traditional worship practices will attract and/or retain young people. Before making a radical shift in your church's worship format do some deeper investigation. Are the young people in your congregation/community really hungry for liturgy (which is certainly possible), or are they actually reacting against a personality-driven, celebrity pastor culture?

Secondly, don't assume every problem in your church is related to personnel. Believe it or not, the senior pastor may not be the issue. It could be the leadership system or structure your church uses. Most churches simply expect way too much from a single leader - that may lead to burn out, isolation, and even moral failure. A structure of shared authority, both in the board room and the pulpit, may prove much healthier for everyone. And it may keep the younger folks engaged in the church by allowing them to have an influence.

Finally, be willing to ask yourself and your church why there is an instinctual desire to elevate one pastor? Why do we put our leaders on a pedestal and then stand in horror, and sometimes amusement, when they fall? The younger generation of evangelicals seems willing to put this culture of church celebrities to death, and that may not be as unwholesome as it sounds.

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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 16, 2008 | Comments (31)

May 14, 2008

From Useful Idiots to Political Misfits

What is an "evangelical"? According to almost 80 prominent pastors, theologians, and activists, the word "evangelical" has become "a term that, in recent years, has often been used politically, culturally, socially - and even as a marketing demographic."

The group signed and released a 19 page "Evangelical Manifesto" last week in Washington D.C. The goal of the document is to "reclaim the definition of what it means to be an Evangelical." They believe that theological, rather than political, principles should define evangelicalism, and they offer a strong rebuke to those who would equate the word with either end of the political spectrum. When evangelicalism is politically defined, they say, it makes Christians "useful idiots" for politicians and parties.

The manifesto's signers are a diverse bunch including Timothy George, dean, Beeson Divinity School; Os Guinness; Richard Mouw, president, Fuller Theological Seminary; David Neff, editor in chief of Christianity Today; and Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners magazine. Absent are some high profile Religious Right folks like James Dobson. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, has written about why he won't sign the manifesto even though he agrees with 90 percent of its content.

One commentator has noted that the manifesto represents a divide between the "old-style populist evangelicals" (think Religious Right, Moral Majority, pro-life, anti-gay marriage) and what he calls the increasing ranks of "cosmopolitan evangelicals" (think global awareness, social justice, poverty, AIDS). He says this bunch (shall we call them Cosmo-Christians?) are "the new public face of the evangelical movement."

It isn't that Cosmo-Christians don't care about abortion, sexuality, or marriage issues, they're simply acknowledging that there are other moral issues address by scripture and impacted by evangelical belief. A Seattle Times article this week reports on this trend:

Eugene Cho, a founder and lead pastor at Seattle's Quest Church, which caters to a predominantly under-35 crowd, urges young Christians to look beyond the two or three issues that have allowed Christians to be "manipulated by those that know the game or use it as their sole agenda." "While the issue of abortion - the sanctity of life - must always be a hugely important issue, we must juxtapose that with other issues that are also very important."

Polls have shown that young Christians aren't any less concerned about the "family values" issues that have traditionally driven Christians to the Republican camp?. It's just that they're also concerned about issues such as social justice and immigration, issues traditionally associated with Democrats.

Shane Claiborne calls these young evangelicals who don't feel at home in either party "political misfits" which, I suppose, is a step up from "useful idiots."

With the election driving political conversations in churches and among evangelicals, these trends are worth discussing. Do you think evangelicals have become useful idiots for the Republican Party? Are we in danger of becoming equally useful and idiotic tools for the Democrats? And do you resonate with Claiborne's label? Are you a political misfit?

Here are a few additional resources to check out. Then come back and share your comments.

"The Evangelical Manifesto: What It Means" (U.S. News & World Report)

Read the full manifesto here.

"Why I am not signing the 'Evangelical Manifesto'"by Richard Land

"Young, evangelical ... for Obama?" (Seattle Times)

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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 14, 2008 | Comments (29)

May 13, 2008

Gordon MacDonald: Is Wright Really Wrong?

In Gordon MacDonald's monthly column at LeadershipJournal.net, he asks this provocative question:

Is there a significant difference between Jeremiah Wright's "God damn America," and the comment so oft-quoted in evangelical pulpits (attributed to a well known preacher who shall go unnamed): "If God does not judge America for its sins, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah."

Don't quibble about word-choice; think substance. Is there a significant difference?

I figure Out of Ur is as good a place as any to answer MacDonald's question. Have at it.

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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 13, 2008 | Comments (41)

May 9, 2008

The Emerging Synagogue?

While following a relatively uninteresting trail of research recently (which I won't retrace here), I happened upon Synagogue 3000 (S3K). This consortium of rabbis and other Jewish leaders is committed to offering "challenging and promising alternatives to traditional synagogue structures." They call themselves "Jewish Emergents," and their understanding of their mission is, in some ways, very similar to that of the Christian Emergent movement.

They are concerned, for example, with communicating authentic faith in a postmodern idiom, which has compelled them to move worship beyond the synagogue. So, they are meeting in homes, bars, and coffee houses, among other places. They are resurrecting some ancient practices, such as worshiping in Hebrew, while ignoring others. And they are reconsidering the qualifications for participation and leadership.

There are also significant differences between Jewish Emergents and Christian Emergents, of course. Along with Synagogue 3000, Jewish Emergents seem more concerned with updating the style and format of Jewish observation and worship than with questioning or reformulating orthodox Jewish theology. Also, while the Jewish Emergents are eager to reconcile younger non-practicing Jews to the faith, they are not concerned with proselytizing.

These differences (and others) highlight the single greatest difference between the groups (not counting the difference in religion): the Jewish Emergent movement is an institutional effort, not an anti-institutional rebellion. In that way, it may be more akin to the Anglican-sponsored emergent movement in the United Kingdom.

Not only are there superficial similarities between Christian and Jewish Emergents, the two groups are formally in conversation (as formally as emergents do anything). Synagogue 3000 invited Emergent spokesmen Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, Dwight Friesen, and Dieter Zander to attend their 2006 meeting as advisors. You can watch a brief video of that meeting below.

The presence of "Emergents" in two major world religions, and the cooperation of the two groups together, elicits a few questions in my mind:

1. For the critics of the Emergent movement: does the development of the Jewish Emergent movement indicate that the Christian Emergents are on to something? That is, does an analogous response from adherents of another religion validate the emergent impulse? If the emergent movement is not a strictly religious phenomenon, but is a cultural one with religious implications, what can traditional churches do to keep up with the times?

2. For proponents of the Emergent movement: what is implied by the fact that Emergent conversation leaders seem more willing to work cooperatively with "emergent" adherents of other religions than traditionalist or "Reformed" Christians? Is the emergent label of greater concern to them than the Christian one?

3. If Jewish Emergents can operate within the institution, why can't Christian Emergents? Can institutional churches and emergent ones benefit from a collegial relationship with one another?

Watch the video. Visit the websites. Tell us what you think.

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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 9, 2008 | Comments (13)

May 8, 2008

Out of Context: Dave Terpstra

"I think our generation is approaching ministry more as an art than a science. Since the Enlightenment, 'doing church' has been seen as a science, and it was seen as linear, organized, with clearcut leadership principles. Our generation doesn't see things that way anymore. We approach things more creatively, more organically."

-Dave Terpstra is teaching pastor of The Next Level Church in Denver. Taken from "Next & Level" in the Spring 2008 issue of Leadership journal. To see the quote IN context, you'll need to see the print version of Leadership. To subscribe, click on the cover of Leadership on this page.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 8, 2008 | Comments (16)

May 6, 2008

John Ortberg on Religion AND Politics

Anybody but me notice that this is an election year? I have loved politics since I was a kid; one of my first and favorite books was a little Cold War classic called Being an American Can Be Fun.

But it's an odd thing. The church - where we're supposed to be fearless; where we're supposed to challenge people on sin, and be prophetic, and face martyrdom - the church is also the place where we're told, "Don't talk about politics!" Or at least we're told that in the kind of churches where I grew up. Other traditions are different. In the African-American church, for instance, for decades church was the one place where politics could be safely talked about; leaving a legacy that is reverberating pretty loudly this year.

Here's the problem: politics is an important sphere of human activity, and as such God is keenly interested in it. It was the Dutch theologian and politician (why don't we have more of those?) Abraham Kuyper who famously said, "There is not one inch of creation about which Jesus Christ does not say: ?This is mine!'"

However, as soon as human beings (including church leaders) start assuming they are in a position to pronounce God's political leanings, things get a little dicey.

In Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, which remains the high water mark in presidential theological reflection, he notes that "Both (the North and the South) read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other." So maybe a way to place politics in its proper context is with a little thought experiment.

Imagine that we elected all the right people to all the right offices. President, Congress, governors, right down to the school board, city council members, and dog catcher (which, by the way, does anyone still get to vote for?) Let's imagine that all of these ideal office holders instituted all the right policies. Every piece of legislation - from zoning laws, to tax codes, to immigration policy, to crime bills - is just exactly the way you know it ought to be.

Would that usher in perfection?

Would the hearts of the parents be turned toward their children?
Would all marriages be models of faithful love?
Would greed and pride be legislated out of existence?
Would assistant pastors find senior pastors to be models of harmony and delight?
Would human beings now at last be able to master our impulses around sexuality, and anger, and narcissism?
Would you finally become the woman or man you know you ought to be?

In the words of theologian Macaulay Culkin: "I don't think so." Because no human system has the ability to change the human heart. Not even democracy, or capitalism, or post-modern-emergent-ancient-future-missionalism. T.S. Elliot summed up our quandary brilliantly: "We want a system of order so perfect that we do not have to be good."

Systems are important but they're also complicated. Historian Mark Noll notes that evangelicals often fail to add value in politics because we like simplicity: good vs. evil; right vs. wrong. Political and economic arrangements are full of complexity and nuance. Well-intended legislation may lead to poor results. When we condition people to think that every bill is a battle between the forces of righteousness versus the minions of darkness, we do not serve the process well. But we specialize in polarizing. No parachurch organization with a political agenda ever sent out a fund-raising letter noting that an upcoming bill was "likely to do 40 percent more good than harm."

We ought to be engaged in the political process. We ought to vote, be educated, be involved. We should do it in a way that is civil and respectful and redemptive. (I saw a cartoon recently where a guy showed up at the pearly gates to hear St. Peter say: "You were a believer, yes. But you skipped the not-being-a-jerk-about-it part.") But we should also remember that the church is not called to be one more political interest group.

The human race needs an administration of another kind. There is one possibility. Someone needs to be in a position to say: "The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News." Scholars like N.T. Wright remind us that these words were politically loaded. They deliberately echo or parody the claims of Rome - that Caesar was Savior, that his kingdom was Good News.

The Gospel of the early church was, among other things, a deliberate in-your-face to the empire. Pretty cheeky when you think that the church had a few thousand ragged cohorts and the Empire ruled sixty-five million hearts. It was pretty clear which horse to bet on. But here we are, two thousand years later, and we give our children names like Peter, Paul, and Mary; and we call our dogs Caesar and Nero.

These gospel words of the early church were deliberately politically loaded. But they were not to be co-opted. They are to stand above every human party and candidate and political platform. The church historically has not done well when it gets too closely associated with empires. The gospel words must transcend higher to go deeper.

My daughter got a CD for me recently from an old Broadway show called Camelot.
Richard Burton is singing at the end ad the dream of Camelot is about to perish in a great battle. He sings/speaks in a tone of unbearable wistfulness:

?Don't let it be forgot,
That once there was a spot,
For one brief shining moment?'

I wondered why that was so evocative. Until I remembered - there is a longing. But it is not really about Camelot, or King Arthur, or Shangri-la, or Constantine, or whoever your favorite candidate is. It's for a carpenter-turned-rabbi, who once ran for Messiah, and got crucified.

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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 6, 2008 | Comments (18)

May 2, 2008

The Passion of the Heist

I have a confession to make: I'm a thief and a murderer. I haven't actually killed a living, breathing human being (I have stolen a thing or two, though; mostly pens and pencils). But one summer in college, a roommate and I played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City until we'd both done pretty much every awful thing there is in the world to do, including killing and stealing.

And it was great fun.

The newest installment of the Grand Theft Auto series is anticipated to be dang near the most lucrative media release ever. Take-Two Interactive Software, the company that owns GTA creator Rockstar Games, expects to sell 9 million copies of the game by the end of their fiscal year in October. They expect sales to gross $400 million in its first week; that's a measly $1 million less than the top grossing movie of all time, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, made in its first week.

Together the series of three games has sold around 70 million copies so far, which puts it in competition with (and actually slightly ahead of) Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (Doubleday, 2003). It will also be in league with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last of Rowling's Harry Potter books, which sold 12 million copies in its first run in the U. S. Think of that: if the game's popularity is comparable to that of Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code, there's no doubt that people in your church will soon be stealing cars and chasing women. Virtually, of course.

Now that the Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter comparisons have been made, that makes me wonder, What is the church to do with Grand Theft Auto IV?

Do you suspect we'll see Christians picketing Game Stop and Wal-Mart for selling a game that celebrates violence, drunkenness, theft, prostitution, and heaven knows what else? Will we write books and Bible studies to refute the game's poor theology? I doubt it. I suspect we'll buy it. And play it. (Not all of us, of course. Females seem to be immune to these sorts of temptations. And since the church is made up mostly of women, then maybe it won't be any problem at all.)

I understand the temptation myself. It didn't take me long to overcome the queasiness I felt during my first exposure to Vice City. Sure, I have qualms about murder and carjacking, but only in real life. It turns out it's quite a lot of fun to pull someone out of their car and drive it around a while when there are no consequences (and no one really gets hurt). It's also great fun to run down pedestrians and take their pocket money or shoot a cop to instigate a high-speed chase. I had no problem preaching on Sunday morning (in real life, of course) and selling drugs from the back of an ice cream truck (in Vice City, of course) on Sunday afternoon.

We continued our killing spree through the summer, my roommate and I, our consciences relatively unscathed. The only thing that gave us pause (you're gonna laugh) was when we acquired, as the reward for completing one mission, a strip club called the Pole Position. Once a week (in Vice City time), one of us drove by the club to pick up our income. Our principles prevented us from going inside the club, where the scantily clad digital dancers made us feel dirty. Gratuitous violence and civil mayhem my evangelical conscience could bear, but the insinuation of sexual sin - that made us both uneasy.

In fact, it's the connection to virtual sexual sin that makes me think I ought to confess my GTA addiction at church. I mean, if you can kill a man in your heart (as Jesus seemed to think you could), then why should we expect God to excuse us for offing someone on a video game? We evangelicals are pretty sure we can commit adultery in our hearts, and we seem to agree that viewing pornography makes us guilty of that heart kind of adultery. If viewing pornography (which isn't a real affair, after all) makes us adulterers, then doesn't killing someone in a video game (which isn't a real crime, after all) make us murderers?

No, you'll object. It's different. Porn involves real people; video games don't. You have a point there. But then again, the deep tragedy of pornography is that it objectifies and dehumanizes women (and men). It completely ignores all the things beneath the skin that makes a human a human - the spirit and personality and whatever else. It presents us with a facsimile of a person. A video game starts with the facsimile and then adds spirit and personality to make it more human so that we find more satisfaction in killing it.

So what do you think? Am I guilty of sins I should confess to my church? Or am I within my liberties as a Christian? Tell us what you think and then take the poll on the left.

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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 2, 2008 | Comments (41)

May 1, 2008

The Next Caption Contest

What are your captions for this cartoon by Tim Walburg?

Winning entries will be published in the Summer 2008 edition of Leadership. Please include your name, your church’s name, city, and state.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at May 1, 2008 | Comments (40) | TrackBack