February 27, 2009
Shane Hipps on "Virtual Community"...Again
Connecting online has value, just not as much as we think.
This conversation got started with a short video of Shane Hipps at the National Pastors Convention discussing whether online community was really community. Scot McKnight posted his response a few days later. Earlier this week, Anne Jackson joined the discussion by asserting that what happens online is "connecting," not "community." Shane Hipps now returns to Out of Ur with his reflections.
Scott et. al, thanks for all your comments and push back. Always appreciated.
Clearly we're playing with semantics here. I don't say that dismissively. Semantics matter - sometimes more than other times. I'll let others judge whether it matters here. It may be that we agree after all.
First, my language in the video was less nuanced than it might have been in written form. That is my tendency in a spontaneous oral interview. I will try to be more precise here.
When I say that "virtual community" is not "community," that does not mean it has no value. As I indicated in the interview, I know that all kinds of deeply meaningful connections and interactions happen online all the time. I have experienced them myself. Some may want to call this "community." Fair enough. I just don't call it "community." That is not intended to dismiss or demean any one's experience online.
I play with semantics in an effort to help us see that "virtual community" and "unmediated community" are not interchangeable. In my opinion, one is actually better than the other. The reason is that "virtual community" occurs primarily on one frequency of the human experience: it is mostly a disembodied, and largely cognitive, connection. And that's wonderful; it's a good thing. It's just not as valuable as unmediated community, which involves the entire range of the human experience - physical, non-verbal, intuitive sense, subtle energies, visual cues, acoustic tones, etc. These are extremely powerful things that should not be quickly dismissed as "nice but not necessary."
Most of us see these ingredients as essential for healthy marriage and parenting. It's the reason no one extols the virtues of online parenting or the value of sex with your spouse in a chat room rather than a bedroom. The same is true of community. For me, community is a sacred and powerful institution, and I prefer to treat it in the same spirit as marriage or parenting.
I guess what I'm saying is that virtual community is like playing the guitar with one string. You can make music; it's just not as interesting or as good as music on a guitar with six strings.
To observe that "real" community is worth more than "virtual" community may seem rather obvious to some and thus not worth stating. However, there is a growing legion of young people who can scarcely tell the difference. A subsequent rift is emerging between parents and teens because of this very issue. It will only become more complex in the years to come. We gloss over this distinction at our own risk. I hope that putting words to these things is actually freeing for us.
I'm not against virtual community anymore than I'm against the wind and the tides; I'm just concerned that too many of us grant it virtues it does not possess. This undue esteem can undermine the profound and lasting impact of an incarnated and embodied Gospel. But it seems we agree on this point.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at February 27, 2009 | Comments (15) | TrackBack
February 25, 2009
Divine Agnosticism
Reverent silence as one antidote to Consumer Christianity.
The following is an excerpt from chapter two of Skye Jethani's new book The Divine Commodity: Discovering a Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (Zondervan, 2009).
My brother and sister-in-law took me to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl while I was visiting Southern California recently. The renowned outdoor amphitheater is nestled into the hills of Hollywood creating a scenic environment for 18,000 people to enjoy an evening of music under the stars. As the sun was setting, the members of the orchestra began taking their seats in the white band shell. The sound of the musicians tuning their instruments was odd. Screeching strings echoed. Blasts came from the wind section. It was chaotic and unpleasant.
Finally, the conductor emerged from stage left. The audience erupted in applause as he took his position on the conductor's platform. He calmly raised his arms over his noisy orchestra. Silence. The time for tuning their instruments was over. After a few moments of quiet anticipation the conductor's arms moved and the soul-stirring music began.
Like an orchestra tuning their instruments, consumer Christianity is producing chaotic and unpleasant noise about God. The prevailing view of God as an alienated commodity has fueled endless pontificating about his ways and character. This noise reveals a failure of reverence toward the one who declared, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways?for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
Rather than adding to the noise perhaps it is time for us to finally be silent, be still, and wait in quit anticipation for God to begin a new work. Leopold Stokowski, the composer who founded the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in 1945, once said, "A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence." Maybe God is waiting for us to be silent long enough so he may begin painting a new picture in our imaginations; to begin transforming our image of a manageable deity into one that can truly inspire.
To start reversing our malformed view of God, perhaps we need to cover our mouths with our hands and humbly confess our ignorance like Job, "I have uttered what I did not know." Strangely, our first step beyond consumer Christianity may be toward agnosticism. An agnostic is literally someone who says "I don't know." The word comes from the Greek a-gnostos meaning "not-knowing." It is commonly used to mean one who neither affirms nor denies the existence of God. Divine agnosticism, the sort I'm advocating, differs in that it affirms the existence of God but then acknowledges our human inability to fully grasp his infinite nature.
Does this mean we can know nothing about God apart from his existence? Of course not. But there is an important hierarchy to knowing; before we can know anything about God we must first humbly confess that we know nothing. Divine agnosticism simply recognizes what Kierkegaard called the "infinite qualitative difference" between God and man. Like Job, an honest relationship with God begins when we accept our finite condition as a creature and cease our futile attempts to contain God with our noisy words.
Job's humble silence before the grandeur of the Almighty was not an isolated event. The same human response has been recorded numerous times in both scripture and history. Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest theologians of the Middle Ages. His Summa Theologia addresses ten thousand objections to the Christian faith. Some have called it one of the greatest intellectual achievements of western civilization. But on December 6, 1273 Aquinas abruptly announced to his secretary that he would write no more. While worshipping in the chapel of Saint Nicholas, Aquinas had an intense experience with God. "I can do no more," he said, "such things have been revealed to me that all I have written seems to me as so much straw."
More recently Karl Barth, arguably the 20th century's most celebrated and prolific theologian, also came to recognize the limits and inadequacy of his words about God. Barth envisioned entering heaven pushing a cart full of his books and hearing the angels laugh. He said, "In heaven we shall know all that is necessary, and we shall not have to write on paper or read more?.Indeed, I shall be able to dump even the Church Dogmatics, over the growth of which the angels have long been amazed, on some heavenly floor as a pile of waste paper."
Consumerism, with its never-ending noise about its consumable god, has led us to believe that our words and notions about God are of supreme importance. It has made the church into a noisy orchestra without harmony and fearful of silence. But humble silence offers us liberation from our digital cocoons to experience wonder once again. Silence allows us the space to contemplate the vastness of the heavens and the God beyond them. Silence can shatter the trivialized deity that has occupied our imaginations, and provide God the canvas to begin a new work in our souls.
You can read the full introduction to The Divine Commodity on Skye's blog.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at February 25, 2009 | Comments (9) | TrackBack
February 24, 2009
The Facebook Fast
Uber-blogger, Anne Jackson, says the web creates connection but not community.
Blogging. Facebook. Twitter. Those three things are practically my middle name. I've been called a "social media butterfly" over the last four years.
The question of "Can community happen online?" which has been the topic of conversation on this blog recently, has also been asked wherever I go. At conferences, at churches, and yes, even at the local cafe where by chance, a Facebook friend recognizes me. Sorry. I have to admit. I usually don't know who you are.
Shane Hipps has spoken. Scot McKnight has spoken. And now, it's my turn to add another view into this virtual world.
During my four years as the leader of a very thriving blog (FlowerDust.net), I've seen many incredible things happen. I've seen believers and unbelievers unite in generously donating close to $200,000 to social justice and poverty. I've seen people openly discuss taboo subjects: pornography, depression, anxiety, gay lifestyles, and theologically grey topics.
In some instances, these online conversations have translated into personal communication (by email, chats, or phone) and some have even turned into face-to-face meetings. The platforms of social media certainly give these personal interactions a "jump start" so to speak, because you do, in some regard, know bits and pieces of the other person's life.
But this is where it gets muddy for me. Is it community?
Given my experience living in both worlds, it may be surprising to hear, but I am beginning to lean on the side of no - what happens online is not community. Before you send me an army of frowning emoticons, please hear me out:
I believe what happens online is connection - not community.
People can be vulnerable and honest online. And at times these online connections can be more life-giving than many of our offline relationships, but they are not the same.
During Lent, I am going to close my blog down. I am not going to Twitter, or update my Facebook profile. I'll still email people, and chat with my friends, but for those few weeks my social networking is getting put on hold. There are a variety of reasons, of which I'll detail on my personal blog shortly, but a small part of this is a personal social experiment. I want to discover whether my online life gets in the way of my offline life. And do others' online lives get in the way of their offline lives?
I'll leave you with a couple small, hypothetical examples. Let's say my friend (who lives in Nashville with me) puts a note on Twitter about having a girls' night. I miss the invitation because of my online Lenten fast, but since most of our "group" is plugged in, everyone else gets it. I'm at home cleaning my bathrooms, unaware of this event. In this case being online would have aided my offline relationships.
Or to take it one step further. Imagine I post about having dinner with a group of friends. Someone else in our online circle sees these updates and wonders why he or she wasn't invited. Although the uninvited person is internalizing the situation, it can still cause a serious sense of isolation and insecurity which then creates tension in our offline relationship. In this case my online life would be detrimental to my offline friendship.
I'm hoping my Lenten experiment will give me more clarity about whether my online life is benefiting my offline relationships.
Online connections are good. They can be deep and good for our souls. But when we turn them into an online community, they can, and do, impact our face-to-face interactions. When we spend more time staring at a glowing monitor than we do into the eyes of those we love, or need to love, it might be time to shut off the computer.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at February 24, 2009 | Comments (93) | TrackBack
February 23, 2009
Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church
A new movement of God is underway, but are we too busy running the church to notice?
The following is an excerpt from Dave Gibbons' new book The Monkey and the Fish (Zondervan, 2009).
The church is called to be a third-culture community. Third culture is about the two purposes of life for every Christ follower: loving God and loving your neighbor.
Without question, there are a lot of effective strategies and fruitful ideas being used in the church and in ministry today. Third culture is not simply a strategy but the way we are to live. One may not be naturally third culture, but we are called to move toward this vision. It seems that more than ever the world is open to such leadership. I say this simply because we have experienced it in communities where we seriously pursued a third-culture lifestyle in diverse cultural contexts spanning several continents and saw how people gravitate toward this adaptive, liquid-type leader.
When my brother and I were teenagers, we were bottomless pits. We could consume massive quantities of food. My poor mom. She found really only one place she could take us that would satisfy us: the Royal Fork, an all-you-can-eat buffet where we ate for three to four hours at a sitting.
I can still picture the luscious spread. For my brother and me, nothing was more glorious than checking out every nook and cranny of that steamy buffet table and then consuming everything in sight. Buffets were our little heaven on earth. Nothing brings people together like good food!
That whole scene reminds me of a story in Luke 14 about another banquet that is jam-packed with prophetic power for us in the new millennium.
Jesus tells the story of a great feast being prepared in the kingdom of God. The host of the banquet has worked feverishly and is enthusiastic about this feast. So he dispatches a servant to visit all of the people who were invited to the banquet to make sure they are coming. One by one, however, they all tell the servant they aren't going to be able to attend. They're busy attending to transactions and urgent matters. They appreciate the invitation but have to take a rain check.
In response, the deeply disappointed host deploys his servant to go throughout the city to invite everyone he sees to the banquet - the homeless, the crippled, the lame, the poor, anyone he encounters. The servant lobs invitations to all comers, and before long, it's clear the banquet tables are going to be filled after all with all manner of grateful, joyful people, people who are not too busy. Jesus quietly closes with the haunting admonition that not one of the people who were originally invited will taste the greatest buffet of all time.
Like all of Jesus' parables, there's plenty of mystery in this story for us to burrow into. What did he mean by this sad, jarring story? Well, to me, there's a message for us in the church today.
As I travel to different nations, I see God's beautiful sculpting hand creatively at work, as unmistakable as it is unobtrusive. Spectacular spiritual shifts are occurring. But I wonder if the church is sometimes too busy, too distracted, too inwardly focused to sense all that's happening, all that could be, all that will be - with us or without us. Is it possible that we are so consumed with managing churches and ministries and organizations that we're missing out on an international spiritual banquet like we've never seen before? Is it possible that the reality of the new world we're living in gives the church an opportunity we've never had before, a chance for the church to be what we've always dreamed it could be?
I believe the church is the embodiment of Jesus on this earth. Think about that. That means that there is no organization with greater potential to have an impact or to be a more potent force for good than a third-culture church that is unleashed. What other organization has that kind of reason for being?
This all might sound pie-in-the-sky. That's fine. But the God we serve and love has the widest idealistic streak of any of us. A baton is being passed today - in the world and in the church - and any church of any size in any place can accept that baton and run with it. God is raising up in our churches - and outside our churches, frankly - a new generation of prophets with voices and liquid leadership skills tailor-made for our times. And I hope that none of us misses it.
In writing this book, my hope is that we will sacrificially foster and prioritize next-generation thinking, next-generation methods, and next-generation leaders in the church so that the global movement Jesus began will be known first and foremost for sharing love without strings, healing, extravagant radical compassion, and radical reconciliation with the world so lovingly breathed into existence by our creator.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at February 23, 2009 | Comments (8) | TrackBack
February 19, 2009
The Next Caption Contest
What is your caption for this cartoon by Jonny Hawkins?
Winning entries will be published in the Spring 2009 edition of Leadership. Please include your name, your church’s name, city, and state.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at February 19, 2009 | Comments (49) | TrackBack
February 18, 2009
The Body Broken for Who?
Theologian J. I. Packer on restricting the Lord's Supper
Late in 2008, theologian J. I. Packer sat down with a few CTI editors to talk theology. Here's what Dr. Packer had to say when the conversation ranged to Communion.
Do you believe that access to the Lord's Table should be restricted, and if so, how does the church do that in a way that's inoffensive?
Yes, I believe access should be restricted at two points. First, the folk who come to share the Lord's Supper with the congregation should be people who have shown that they can discern the Lord's body. In other words, they understand what the Communion service is all about: Christ crucified for us.
The second point of restriction is when individuals in the congregation are known to be living in sin. If the attempt has been made to wean them away from sin according to the rules of Matthew 18, and it's failed, then the text says, "Let him be to you as a heathen and a publican," a tax collector, someone beyond the pale. The pastor, with the backing of those who were trying to wean the person away, should say, "Don't come to the Lord's Table. If you come, the bread and wine will not be served to you. I shall see to that."
Churches that don't have a stated pastor - old-fashioned brethren assemblies and gatherings of that kind - must make their own rules as to how that warning gets communicated. If it's a church where the elements are passed down the rows, the elders must be alerted to the fact that this chap is sitting in church, brazen, expecting to receive the Lord's Supper. It's their business to escort him out.
Now, there's got to be agreement amongst the congregational leaders as to what constitutes a serious offense. You wouldn't exert this kind of discipline for people who, shall I say, play Bingo when the congregation can't regard the playing of Bingo as a particularly godly activity. But again, amongst evangelicals I would expect that in most churches, but perhaps not all, it would be recognized that a gay partnership is contrary to the authority of Scripture.
Why do we do this at all? Well, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11 that when you come together to eat the Lord's Supper, you must come as those who discern the body, and while this has been disputed, I think that discerning the body means what the church has always thought it meant; that is, it's not discerning the responsibilities of fellowship within the congregation, the spiritual body of Christ. It's discerning that the sacramental action of giving and receiving the bread and the wine points to the physical body of Christ, crucified for us.
But whichever interpretation you think is right, Paul does call for discipline of those not discerning the body. If the person won't accept the rebuke of the church, and you think that the body is the congregation, then they're still not discerning the body, and the authority of Christ through his body.
You can't avoid offending the offender. But I think the procedure I've described keeps the offense to the congregation down to the minimum.
What about when you have a non-Christian visiting the church, just investigating the claims? How would you handle that case?
A common practice is to make an announcement before Communion that we welcome at the Lord's Table any visitors who are in good standing as members of their own congregation. That means they have been baptized, are making a credible profession of faith now, and have no major offense in their life. They're currently under discipline from their own congregation.
This interview originally appeared on Off the Agenda.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at February 18, 2009 | Comments (44) | TrackBack
February 17, 2009
Ur Wisdom: Megachurch
The uncommon insights of Url Scaramanga.
For those of you concerned that Url Scaramanga is anti-megachurch, stay tuned. You'll find that Url is an equal opportunity offender.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at February 17, 2009 | Comments (4) | TrackBack
February 16, 2009
Scot McKnight on "Virtual Community"
A response to Shane Hipps video from NPC.
Thanks for your video, Shane. Your point about not equating virtual community (grant me the term for the moment) with real community is one that needs to be heard. But, I'm not so sure it is this simple...
First, as a blogger who has what I have sometimes called the Jesus Creed "community," I do think there are some senses in which community is apt. For some, this is about the only "community" with Christians they can right now have. I honor that. For others it is therapeutic to dance, as it were, at a distance -- not the complete thing, of course, but still participating in some dimensions of community. And there is another dimension: there are clearly dimensions of fellowship at work in blog communities. Never the whole, but some. And that needs to be considered for what it really is.
But now something perhaps more significant: by shrinking community to embodied community I wonder if we have written "communion of the saints" (a community) off the map. Isn't there something eternal, something spiritual, and something profoundly true that all Christians of all ages and of all locations are in communion with one another?
This means it may be appropriate to refer to internet communities as a participation in the communion of the saints (I have experienced this with some folks whom I've gotten to know at some levels via internet and via e-mails and via parcel post letters) and as virtual communities.
I would agree with you that some substitute virtual for real at their own loss; I would also agree that some think they are the same. But I wonder if it is not swinging too far the other way to deny the word community to what can happen -- palpably so for many -- in cyberspace.
Come to think of it, I wonder if you might just provide for us a full definition of "community." Do you mean "ecclesia" or "koininia" or something else?
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at February 16, 2009 | Comments (17) | TrackBack
February 12, 2009
Video Ur: Shane Hipps at NPC
Virtual community and a pixelated gospel.
We create media, and then media re-creates us. That's the message Shane Hipps, author of Flickering Pixels (Zondervan, 2009) wanted pastors at NPC to hear in his interview on the main stage last night and in his seminars this morning. Shane's latest book is a journey into the hidden power of media--and a challenge to the standard line that the message stays the same even when the medium changes.
Skye and I sat down with Shane today to ask him a couple of questions that are of particular interest on the blogosphere: how is Internet-based community different from flesh-and-blood Christian community? And what happens to the gospel when it's translated into a digital medium such as Second Life?
You can look forward to a review of Shane's book, Flickering Pixels, in the next issue of Leadership.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at February 12, 2009 | Comments (12) | TrackBack
February 11, 2009
Live from NPC: Rob Bell
Paper cuts, forgiveness, and chocolate covered turds.
Most of the church leaders attending this morning's session at NPC probably thought they don't share much in common with mega-church pastor, mega-celebrity, mega-author Rob Bell. They were wrong. Bell spoke about being criticized - the "million little paper cuts" of criticism that pastors face all the time. He used that common pastoral experience to talk about the "absolute imperative that we become masters at forgiving people."
Bell recounted the story of a letter he received from a supporter. The note, in which the writer recounted how he defended Bell when another person accused him of being nothing more than "fluff and irrelevance," was intended to edify and encourage. But he said the only part he remembered was the criticism. This, says Bell, is the definition of a "chocolate covered turd." It looks sweet on the outside until you take a bite. Then it betrays you.
That's how ministry is. You may hear nine really good things, but it's the one critical comment that will eat away at your soul. We tell ourselves that it's really nothing, that "you just have to laugh about it," and that those small paper cuts really don't hurt. But they do. Over time, says Bell, those small wounds build up and we experience "death by paper cuts."
The only solution is forgiveness.
Bell says that if we don't forgive three things could happen:
1. We will hold back from our prophetic calling. We won't exhibit the courage our calling requires to speak the necessary but difficult things. If we've been wounded in the past when we've been vulnerable, honest, or challenging, we'll be less likely to do it again. We will have learned "the painful reality that sheep have teeth."
2. We will begin to list and label people in the church as being for us or against us. This, he says, doesn't honor people and creates unhealthy divisions in the church.
3. We'll indirectly seek revenge. It may come out as humor or sarcasm, or even covert gossip, but we'll want to inflict some vengeance on those who have hurt us.
Drawing on the wisdom of Jesus, Parker Palmer, and Tim Keller, Bell offers an alternative response. We are called to forgive by going through three steps: (1) Name it. We shouldn't just ignore it or minimize it. By naming why we are hurt we can disarm the wound's secret control over us. (2) Accept it. Realize that you are hurt and don't throw the pain back or nurse it secretly on the side. (3) Absorb it. This is the most painful part - what Tim Keller equates with a form of death. It's really awful to absorb the wrongs others have done to you, but on the other side of that death is new life; resurrection that will empower you to love more like Christ.
Rob Bell ended his session by pushing a shopping cart through the aisles as hundreds of pastors deposited papers into the cart with the names of people and congregations that had wounded them. Bell prayed over the shopping cart and for the hurting pastors in the room.
It was a moving and very healing session. Although he has his critics, Rob Bell proved to those in attendance this morning at least two things: He's a brilliant communicator, and he has the heart of a pastor - wounds and all.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at February 11, 2009 | Comments (40) | TrackBack
February 10, 2009
Live from NPC: Shane Claiborne
So a comedian, a Jew, and a monk walk into a conference...
Skye and I arrived in San Diego this afternoon for the 2009 National Pastors Convention.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the opening evening of headlining sessions was the variety.
The evening started with a short routine by acclaimed comedian Michael Jr. Michael is a young black performer from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who says he operates by a sort of "comedy accountability." Because he performs in bars, clubs, casinos, and even churches (Michael's a Christian), he says "everything I say in a club has to be clean enough to say from a church pulpit; everything I say in a pulpit has to be funny enough to say in a club." His material tonight drew from his experience becoming a Christian and encountering the Bible for the first time.
Next, Andy Crouch interviewed A. J. Jacobs, best-selling author of The Year of Living Biblically. Jacobs calls himself a "respectfully agnostic Jew," but his insights into the power of Scripture were really interesting. He decided that the best way to deal with the Bible was "just to dive in. You pretend to be a better person and eventually you become a little bit better person." That's not Christian theology, for sure. But he articulated a profound respect for the Bible and, what's more, for putting it into practice.
The main event this evening was Shane Claiborne, who spoke about the "new economic vision" that God gives his people in Scripture. An important first step to understand Scripture's economic vision is "learning to laugh in the face of things in the world [like money] that don't have real power." He spent most of his time unpacking Mark 10:29-30, by suggesting that, in God's economy, there is enough for everyone because no one has more than he needs. He quoted an early Christians who said that a person who has two coats when someone has none was considered a thief in the kingdom of God; when you give to the poor, you're simply giving back what has been stolen.
He argued that the "end of poverty was one of the signs of the birthday of the church," and that loving our neighbors is not an "act of distant charity" but a matter of entering into relationship with our needy neighbors. This great summary line came late in his talk: "The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them away." Then he put his money where his mouth was. Shane cashed the honorarium check that NPC paid him for his sermon tonight into $1 bills. As he concluded, he had someone bring a bag of the dollar bills to him; then he scattered them on the floor and invited everyone to come take one "as a sign of God's jubilee."
I found it difficult to gauge the audience's response to Shane's presentation. They were quiet and subdued; not hostile by any means, but not enthusiastic. I think his message struck home. I, for one, found it deeply convicting.
Stay tuned for more from Skye and me live from NPC.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at February 10, 2009 | Comments (27) | TrackBack
February 6, 2009
Ur Wisdom: Ministry
The uncommon insights of Url Scaramanga
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at February 6, 2009 | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 5, 2009
Pastors or Personalities?
In a self-obsessed culture, pastors have exchanged “death to self” for self-promotion.
I think I was in college when I first saw that title of a magazine that brazenly called itself SELF, and it was so bold it could have been called SELF! Nurtured in a theology that drew its juices from the Bible and influenced by the likes of Augustine and Luther and Calvin, I was taken back by anyone or any magazine that would advertise itself with the word "self." The self, so I was taught, was to die daily (Luke 9:23) or be put to death (Romans 6). In fact, my pastors often spoke of the "mortification" of the flesh (and self).
Nurture, then, put me on my heels when I saw a magazine called SELF and when that sentiment made its nest in Whitney Houston's famous song "The Greatest Love of All." Its clinching words tell us that "learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all." Well, yes, I say to myself, we do need to have a proper love of our self ? but how can our "greatest" love be one directed at ourselves? The Me Generation has created what Jean Twenge is now calling Generation Me. Others call it iGen. This value is everywhere; it's the air GenMe breathes; and it has made potent inroads into the church.
Recently I saw a church's website where instead of finding "Pastors" or "Staff" it listed "Personalities." A click-through revealed the "personalities" of these personalities, or at least the "personalities" these people wanted others to see. I don't recall all the details, but I read things about what they ate for breakfast and what they'd do if they weren't doing their church jobs. It went on and on, but I had had enough so I clicked the red X at the top and went to my favorite chair and just wondered awhile.
I wondered about the way I was nurtured that led me to be offended and shocked by any pastor permitting himself to be displayed this way on the church's website. My upbringing had taught me certain things about a pastor:
First, it is a sacred calling to be yanked from sin into the place of not only receiving grace but dispensing it. The primary task of the pastor is to "spread gospel." How? As a shepherd of people and as a preacher of the gospel. To be sure, the pastor learns to spread gospel to herself or himself too. The website could easily have reflected this. It didn't.
Second, it is a noble calling to be a leader of God's people in this world. The previous generations created an image of pastors that focused on distance, separation, and holiness, and it sometimes overdid the nobility of that image. This generation has undone that image and, in the process, has become enamored with "authenticity" and "I'm just like you in every way." I doubt the apostle Paul had the latter notion in mind when he sent off his instructions for elders in the Pastoral letters. Leaders lead because they've got something to say and show to others.
Third, it requires a commitment to reverence both before God and about the task of pastoring. Perhaps the biggest needs of the current generation are models of holiness and reverence. That is, pastors who flow into silence before the very Name of God, who speak in hushed tones in the sacredness of God's presence, and who speak of themselves and their tasks with a sense of gratitude and wonder. We need more Eugene Petersons. You might think of others.
Fourth, above all pastors are to be examples of the mortification of the self and the flesh. They are to exhibit daily self-denial. The pastor stands before his or her congregation as a whole package: pastor, father, husband, mentor, spiritual director, sibling, friend, and fellow Christian. As a "fellow" Christian the pastor is a model before everyone of the "death to self, death to the flesh" life and lifestyle. Many today are nervous about putting pastors on pedestals and of elevating pastors above the general priesthood of all believers. That is understandable, but the opposite extreme isn't any better. We cannot lose the expectation that the pastor should be a really good example of what it means to live properly before God.
I don't consider myself old-fashioned; I don't consider myself a stick-in-the-mud. But I'm quite happy to say that pastors are to be holy and reverent and so deeply grateful for the grace to be a pastor that they'd never advertise themselves with the word "personality," which is nothing other than the word "SELF" dressed up in postmodern clothes they picked up on Freud's couch. The best word for a pastor on the website is still "Pastor."
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at February 5, 2009 | Comments (26) | TrackBack
February 3, 2009
The Hansen Report: Rural Exodus
Is rural America a mission field?
Time traveled to the frozen Midwest to report the obvious: Rural communities struggle to recruit trained pastors. The dateline could have read 1979 and the story would not have looked altogether different. The situation has certainly worsened in the last 30 years, but the problem's origins date back at least that long.
Plagued by severe "brain drain," rural American towns have been grasping for ways to entice doctors and motivated teachers to return and settle. According to Time, pastors may be even less inclined to serve small towns than their college-educated counterparts.
"The ticktock of farm auctions and foreclosures in the heartland, punctuated by the occasional suicide, has seldom let up since the 1980s," Time reporter David Van Biema wrote. "But one of the malaise's most excruciating aspects is regularly overlooked: rural pastors are disappearing even faster than the general population, leaving graying congregations helpless in their time of greatest need."
Van Biema cites Fund for Theological Education president Trace Haythorn, who says not even half of rural congregations are led by a seminary-trained pastor who works for them full-time. The other half of churches make due with lay leaders or a pastor who did not attend graduate school. Many share a pastor with one or more other churches. Even $35,000, the average starting salary for seminary graduates, overburdens churches whose members depend on Social Security checks.
But it's not like you can find a huge pool of pastors dying to serve in rural churches who can't land a paying gig. It takes guts to seek out a rural placement after seminary when your classmates have dreams of planting urban churches. Shannon Jung tells Van Biema, "A town without a Starbucks scares [young pastors]." There may be some discomfort with forsaking suburban amenities. A bigger problem is peer support. For decades, bright young minds have been fleeing small towns and the Midwest in particular. You know the Midwest is struggling when even its cities earn recognition as the places where notoriously restless Americans are least inclined to move. If Minneapolis, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Detroit can't entice young professionals, what success will their rural dependents find? It's lonely on the range for pastors who want to discuss Calvin. Such fantasies belong to the 1950s and Marilynne Robinson novels.
If there were easy answers to this crisis, someone would have solved it by now. It's not like rural churches have surrendered to their fate. One of my friends pastors a rural Evangelical Free Church formed by the merger of Baptist and Presbyterian congregations. The fight for survival brings certain theological differences into perspective. It would be easy to blame the seminaries and Christian colleges for escalating tuition costs. Maybe if pastors graduated without debt they would take less than $35,000 and settle down in towns where that kind of money can go a long way. But many Christian schools are based in suburban or urban areas with costly standards of living. And professors need to pay down their own education debt.
It would also be easy for congregations to decide that graduate education is overrated. There is already tremendous pressure on overstretched pastors in some rural churches to spend the bulk of their time visiting members rather than preparing to preach. You don't need to attend seminary to develop bedside manner. But remembering Paul's charge to Timothy (2 Tim. 4:2), we recognize the centrality of the preaching role for pastoral ministry. And seminary is where many pastors develop these invaluable skills. Perhaps congregations can become more proactive in encouraging and identifying candidates for full-time ministry. Supporting them through seminary may be costly in the short term but would pay lasting dividends when they return to serve the congregations that reared them.
Of course, such an option is impossible if the town's youth population has been depleted. In these areas the church feels an acute need to seek the community's welfare (Jer. 29:7). In the meantime, perhaps some suburban pastors will develop a missionary mindset toward rural America. Like missionaries, these pastors may be lonely and underpaid. But they will also abound in spiritual rewards, including the eternal appreciation of Christians who may not have otherwise heard God's Word proclaimed.
They might even begin to enjoy rural America. They won't be spending all their time administering programs such as those that engulf many suburban pastors. They might even find the small community strangely willing to incorporate a young pastor's fresh ideas if they are tactfully implemented. And a pastor working in rural America can always count on church members willing to serve beyond the constraints of time and ability. Starbucks or not, that's the kind of gig that God could use to cure a pastor's soul.
Posted by UrL Scaramanga at February 3, 2009 | Comments (27) | TrackBack
