Is the church a failure? (Matthew 16:18)
“If by means of its ministrations, the community round about the church is steadily becoming more Christian;
if kindness, sympathy, purity, justice, good-will, are increasing in their power over the lives of men;
if business methods are becoming less rapacious;
if employers and employed are more and more inclined to be friends rather than foes;
if politicians are growing conscientious and unselfish;
if the enemies of society are in retreat before the forces of decency and order;
if amusements are becoming purer and more rational;
if polite society is getting to be simpler in its tastes and less ostentatious in its manners and less extravagant in its expenditures;
if poverty and crime are diminishing;
if parents are becoming more wise and firm in the administration of their sacred trust, and children more loyal and affectionate to their parents,
–if such fruits as these are visible on every side, then there is reason to believe that the church knows its business and is prosecuting it with efficiency.
If none of these effects are seen in the life of the community, the evidence is clear that the church is neglecting its business, and that failure must be written across its record.
From “The Church and Modern Life”
by Washington Gladden, 1836-1918
What say you? Is Gladden’s measure a useful one? If so, how is the church measuring up? If not, how would you measure and rate the church’s effectiveness?
Is My Kid Morally On Track?
When I take the boys to the doctor, my favorite part of the experience is the chart. You know which one I mean. They measure and weigh and bingo, you get a little dot on a chart that says, “Your child’s height ranks in the 95th percentile compared with other kids his age.” Whoo hoo! My kid is awesome!
Now I know that the real point of these tests is to catch medical problems early, not to give parents yet another reason to brag on or stress over their kid, but it’s still fun. Why should doctors get all the cool progress charts? I collected the work of psychological and moral development experts like Piaget and Kohlberg, and synthesized it into something easy to remember.
Warning: If you are looking for scientific rigor, you will be sadly disappointed. This is about collecting wisdom and packaging it for easy recall.
Level 1: Pre-Conventional (Infant-Toddler)
- Icon: The Sun – because everything revolves around me. The sun can be warm or harsh.
- Mental Milestones: Self-awareness, object permanence
- Moral Milestones: Trust – Is the world a safe place?
- Catchphrase: “Mine!” “I didn’t do it.”
- Motivated by: Intuitive self-interest, curiosity
- Avoids: pain, frustration
Level 2: Conventional (Child)
- Icon: Police Officer – because they’re here to enforce the rules. Officers can be helpful or annoying.
- Mental Milestones: Autonomy, Imagination/Logic
- Moral Milestones: Empathy – If that were me, how would I feel?
- Catchphrase: “You’re gonna get in trouble!” “It’s not fair!” “I’m a good boy/girl”
- Motivated by: rules, authority, fairness
- Avoids: punishment, guilt
Level 3: Abstract (Teen)
- Icon: Wolf – because it’s all about the pack. Wolfpacks can be a safe haven, or they can be stifling.
- Mental Milestone: abstract thinking
- Moral Milestone: identity/fidelity
- What I’m learning: Who am I? What kind of person will I be?
- Catchphrase: “Whatever” “What would a ________ do?”
- Motivated by: family and friends, social contract
- Avoids: shame, isolation
Level 4: Synthetic (College-Adult)
- Symbol: Compass – Neither rigid nor changeable, the synthetic individual applies internalized principles to unique situations.
- Mental Milestone: Ideology, Intimacy
- Moral Milestone: Integrity – owning your beliefs for yourself
- Catchphrase: “You may be right” “Here I stand”
- Motivated by: Internalized principles, Self-actualization
- Avoids: Dissonance
Level 5?
- Transcendence: seeing the reality behind the symbol
- Universalizing: see thing the Truth behind a truth
“Helping” God
Got a great comment from Mario Hugo, and thought it deserved a post. Thanks for the comment, Mario.
hi
i love the sermon, but more than that i love the lord. i am also nuts about him question is how do i convince my other fiends about him. i live in South Africa and we have diffrent cultures here. we have started a worship group in our church and maybe you could give us advise on how to talk to our peers to love him as much as i love himyour brother in Christ
God Bless
Francis of Assisi (or St. Francis, depending on your church background) was an amazing teacher, and preacher. But most of all, he was a reckless lover of God. He said, “Preach constantly. Use words when necessary.”
It is not your job to convince. Your job is to love God and love your neighbor. The Holy Spirit does the convincing. Paul says to be prepared to give a reason for your faith. Your love for God and your neighbor should shine in such stark contrast to the selfishness of the world around you that people will come and ask you questions. When they do, speak as honestly and truthfully as you know how, and leave the rest to God.
The biggest barrier to the spread of the good news is Christians trying to “help” God. If it were possible to force people into the kingdom, God would have done it already.
Theme song: “Stand Up Comedy” by U2
Da Vinci Code: fact or fiction?
Another question from a bright former youth group member: “What’s the church say about the Da Vinci Code? What’s your opinion?”
I actually got a chance to see the cathedral where they taped parts of the Da Vinci Code during my study trip to England. The church had a fairly impressive exhibit about it, and they explained it like this: The Davinci Code is a gripping fiction story, sprinkled with just enough history to make it seem convincing. There really was a movement called gnosticism, and they really were rejected by the church as heretics (false believers), and some of them really did think Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ girlfriend/wife. There also really was a group of knights called the Templars and they really were put down by the pope. However, there is no historical connection between those two groups. Some people claim there is a connection, but no one with any credibility in academic circles. They’re conspiracy seekers who value a good story more than good evidence.
Me: If Davinci Code is true, then all of Christianity is a lie. If you read the rest of his stuff, especially his earlier stuff, it becomes clear that this guy has a serious grudge with Christianity and he’s trying to take it down. He says that the gnostics believed Jesus was just a man, and that the church came and turned him into a God. But when you actually go read gnostic stuff (which you absolutely can do on the net, despite the way he pretends like it’s a super huge secret suppressed by the church) you’ll discover that the gnostic’s problem with Jesus was that he was too human. They believed that the earth and all created things were dirty and evil, and that the realm of pure ideas and spirit was perfection. Dan Brown puts words in their mouth that are the exact opposite of what they actually believed. They believed Jesus was some kind of demigod that only seemed human. That’s specifically why the church rejected them, because the church has said from very early on that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. If he wasn’t fully human, then he still doesn’t know what it’s like to be us and all his claims of being on our side are just lies. The way they said it was “Whatever is not taken up is not redeemed” meaning anything about us that Jesus didn’t take on himself would therefore not be fixed by him. If he took all of our humanity on himself, then all of our humanity is understood and restored through him.
My take on Job
One of my old youth group kids… (You know you’ve been in youth ministry for a while when your youth group kids have kids that are almost old enough to be in your youth group.) Anyway, one of my old youth group kids asked me, “What’s the deal with Job? Why does God allow such horrible things to happen to him?” I love it when they think! Makes me feel like I’m actually accomplishing something! Here’s my take. Do with it what you will.
The church’s answers are many and varied. Some people say, “It’s a test. God has the right to test his people. Stop whining.” Other people say, “It’s the devil! God doesn’t do evil, the devil does!” Some people say, “God allows evil so that we can better know the good by contrast.” So that’s the church answer. It really depends on who you ask because the church doesn’t have one “approved” answer.
Rob’s answer? Job is a metaphor. Job stands for us. We’re walking along minding our own business and wham, life kicks the crap out of us, and we go to God and say, “What’s the deal? I thought you were supposed to be watching out for me?” And our “friends” all gather round and give us really lousy advice that just makes us feel worse. And from our perspective none of it makes sense at all.
But then the story zooms back, way way back, and we see God and the Devil talking. The Devil’s question is “How do you know if he really means it? He only loves you because he gets something out of it.”
This is obviously stupid, because if God really is God, then he knows what’s in our hearts and has no need to prove anything to anyone, but it’s not supposed to be historical truth, it’s supposed to be a metaphor, or a campfire story with a moral, whatever, anyway. The point is, “How do we know our love is real? We know if our life sucks and we still love.”
Why does God let all the crappy stuff happen? Because there are only way two ways to stop evil in the world. You either fix people so they can’t treat each other like garbage (at which point they stop being people, and start being robots) or you teach people to choose love. First you teach them not to take ten eyes for an eye, then you teach them not to take one eye for an eye, then you teach them to give up their own eye rather than letting someone else go blind.
The story of Job is a small step in that process that says, there is bigger stuff going on here than you can understand. Your job is not to understand, your job is to love, even when, especially when, it doesn’t make sense. God is not a child burning ants for fun. God is a gambler taking long odds on the chance that our love might be real.
God’s Sarcasm
I have a new favorite comic. Not the whole series, a specific strip.
Why do I like this particular comic so much? The kid, Slick, starts out sad because the world sucks so much. He gets ticked and starts screaming at God, and God throws up a hand puppet and mocks him. Isn’t that horrible? Some of my conservative friends are offended that I used the word suck, and they’re more offended that this kid is yelling at God. Some of my liberal friends are offended because God is pictured as a sarcastic jerk who mocks our pain.
Me? I love it. Look at that last frame, where God pulls out the sarcasm. Look at Slick’s face. He’s smiling! That’s me. Totally.
The world sucks. If you’re not seeing that, then you’re either amazingly sheltered or willfully blind. Lots of good stuff too, for sure, but nothing to counterbalance hatred, disease, poverty, and death. It’s not even close. Yet here I am, raised to believe that a loving God is ultimately in charge. So I say to God, basically, “Life is SUCKING!!” Except I say it nicer than that because, you know, he’s God. God knows what I was going to say, but I think he appreciates the effort. (And yes I know God isn’t male, stop being pedantic or go away.)
And you know what God says back? Well, nothing really. Nothing I could point to and say “Thus sayeth the Lord.” (Part of me would love to be that kind of prophet, and part of me is still too scared to ask. Read the book. It sucks to be a prophet.) It’s just feelings, intuitions, coincidences, thoughts, scriptures, insights, even the odd dream and it all adds up to something very like that comic.
God is funny.
And sarcastic.
And some days, exactly what I need to get myself off my whiney butt and back in the fight is for God to go, “Boo hoo hoo. Life is soooo hard for you. Booo hoo hooo!” Maybe I’m weird. Ok, I know I’m weird. But that’s the God I know.
Open Source Sermon Retrospective
First thing: thank you! It was a blast working with all of you to create something new. Reaction on Sunday morning was very good and I’m still getting comments from people. I am convinced that it was a stronger, more compelling sermon because of your involvement, and I’m very happy to pronounce the experiment a success. (Here’s the text and video in case you missed it)
How did it go? As I said above, response from the congregation was strong and positive. As for how it went from my perspective in the pulpit, it was fun and a little scary. I found myself a little more tied to my manuscript than usual because I wanted to honor everyones contributions. I also spoke more quickly than is normal for me because it was longer than my usual sermons. On the other hand, there was a sense of comfort or community because I felt like I was speaking for all of us. It felt like you were up there with me. (Yeah, cheesy, whatever. It’s true)
What did you do right? We took the time to lay the groundwork. In fact, we spent much more time on groundwork than we did on the actual sermon. We took our time picking a topic, picking texts, aligning principles and purpose. All those discussions and agreements meant that the sermon itself came together much more quickly and smoothly than I had expected. I can’t emphasize enough how important this was. From the very start I feared our experiment would result in a chaotic mishmash of conflicting ideas and spam. The fact that we wound up with a coherent and compelling sermon testifies to the integrity of the contributors and the hard work we did coming to consensus before we started writing the sermon.
What would you change?
- I wouldn’t use PBwiki again. Their customer support is great and they gave me excellent administrative controls, but a number of people complained about the interface. People had a hard time signing up, and once they signed up they had a hard time making edits. I think I’d try Wikia next time. Their interface is very clean and simple.
- I’d make the whole thing simpler. There was way too much “Click here, check there, sign up here, wait for confirmation, blah blah blah” when the whole reason people got involved was because it was a cool idea. People wanted to contribute! It was my job to make it as easy as possible for them to do so, and in my excitement I left way too many stumbling blocks laying around between them and their goal
- I would try to open it up to more involvement. A truly open source project would be less controlled and have many more contributors. I wasn’t brave enough for that on the first go, but I’d definitely take a step in that direction if we tried it again.
What did you learn? The Pareto principle is your friend. I spent a long time lamenting the 80/20 rule as it applied to church life, but this experiment renewed my perspective. A small, committed group did most of the heavy lifting. The members of that group shifted during each stage of the project, but there was always a core keeping things on track and pushing the project forward. Then there was a cloud of of interested observers, some were too busy, some were too shy, but whatever their reason they didn’t contribute in large ways. The crazy thing was, they contributed in their own little ways and all those tiny contributions made a big difference. Even if your only contribution was an idea that never made it into the final draft, your presence in the conversation made the whole thing stronger. Thank you.
Will you do it again? I honestly don’t know. Certainly I benefited from the experience, and the sermon was better for it, but I still have some real questions. Part of the reason the sermon worked was because it was about technology. Would a similar format work with a more traditional subject? Also, we spent almost two months on this thing! Most preachers I know spend a week on theirs. Would it still work in a shorter time window? Those aren’t deal-breakers. I hear some responses knocking around in the back of my head already, but I’d have to mull it over a bit before I said yes. For sure I wouldn’t do it the same way, but a second experiment is not out of the question.
What do you think? What did we do right? What could we do better? What did you learn? Should we try again?
P.S. – Thank you to everyone who linked to the project!
Emergent Village
Think Christian
The Church Geek
Gemeindearbeit
Ranges Community Church
Keep Your Eyes Open
Take a hint from fighter pilots. In a quickly changing environment, observation equals advantage. Any moment with the current reality differs from you original perception, there is an opportunity, because your observation is unique. Even if someone were intentionally observing the same thing at the same instant, they would be observing from a different perspective. If you discover no advantage, either shift your perspective, or wait.
Open Source Sermon: Topic Chosen
Deadline day. Today’s the day we choose the topic for the world’s first open source sermon. Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment, to make suggestions, and to critique. Here’s the full list of sermon topic proposals pulled from your comments.
- The church’s role in caring for the environment
- The possibility of life on other planets
- The laughter/humor of God
- Christianity vs. narcissism
- Food, fellowship, and eating disorders
- The body of Christ
Based on the comments, the top three suggestions were: the environment, the humor of God, and the body of Christ. I agree that the environment is an important topic, and one too often ignored in churches. On the other hand, I’m obviously interested in the idea of a God that laughs. (Hence the name of my blog!) But I think the body of Christ image has the most to offer in this context.
We are performing an experiment, a two way test. The net promises limitless information and collaboration, but do those promises apply to the church as well? Is Jesus welcome on the net? If not, then this experiment will fail. The open source processes that created elegant, complex software like Linux and Firefox will fail to produce a preachable sermon. All we’ll get is more of the triviality and purposeless argument that so often passes for content on the net.
But the test works both ways. The church promises connections too: peace and wholeness. The church promises more than information: truth, or at least wisdom. It promises we will be the body of Christ, and Christ will be our spiritual head. Then it hides those promises behind walls of bureaucracy and conformity. Is the net welcome in the church? If not, then this experiment will fail. The church that learned Latin, German, English, and thousands of other languages will fail to speak to the digital age. All we’ll get is more of the triviality and purposeless argument that so often passes for sermons on Sunday morning.
If we do it right, the sermon itself will become a meta-message of hope.
Congratulations! We’ve completed the first step. Our subject is the body of Christ in a digital age. Paul has already suggested a possible sermon title, “Jesus is my Facebook Friend”. Our next job is to find scriptures that speak insightfully to that topic. We need at least one Biblical text, but non-biblical texts are welcome as well. Put your suggestions in a comment to this post. The deadline is Aug 23 at noon, Central Standard Time (GMT-6) when I’ll choose the winner(s) with consideration both to the principles of the project and the general consensus of contributors.
Outsourcing Church
My last suggestions weren’t radical enough. The only pushback was Dave’s comment, “I guess the only one in your list I immediately balked at was the customization idea and the outsourcing idea, I could be reading it wrong, but it seems to demean the Church experience rather than enhance it.”
Economics teaches us that everyone benefits when people specialize. If I focus on sermons and the Beatles focus on songwriting, at the end of the year we write a large number of sermons and songs, some of which are good. If the Beatles and I don’t specialize, but try to do a little of both, we wind up with less total sermons and songs, and fewer of high quality. (On a side note, it’s oddly fun to write “the Beatles and I”.)
I’m not trying to demean the church. We already outsource. We let the preacher handle the sermons, the secretary handle the bulletin, the custodian handle the building. Sometimes we let talented volunteers step up: painters, carpenters, etc. But what if we didn’t limit ourselves to just church members, or local businesses?
What if you outsourced the sermon via the net? I know a lot of churches that can’t afford a full time minister. What would that even look like? I can’t imagine an aging country church gathering in the old building, watching a TV screen. Is there a situation where it would work? A strictly on-line church, maybe?
What if you outsourced the youth ministry? The majority of churches can’t pay a youth minister. Some churches already collaborate on youth events, but it would take an amazing amount of trust to send our kids to some other church for teaching. What if they never came back? What if they didn’t turn out like us? Is fear the only thing holding us back? Are we building God’s kingdom, or just protecting our institution?
What if you outsourced the book-keeping? I know way too many churches have no clue who their members are because their records are not up to date. A secondary advantage of outsourcing is that the specialists enforce appropriate standards. If we outsourced our financials, I bet those companies would require us to adopt some best practices to prevent fraud if for no other reason than to protect themselves from liability.
Are there some things that could never be outsourced? The sermon seems like a tough one in most contexts. The sacraments too, since by definition they’re live, in-person, experiences. No reason we all have to be in one room for board meetings. No reason we have to rely only on church members to do the administrative grunt work work of the church, especially if others can do it better. No reason that we all have to be in the same room to learn, or make friends. But the real work of the church (visiting the sick and the prisoner, serving the poor and the outcast , communal worship) cannot be digitized because we are not spiritual souls knocking around in a physical shell. I love my digital communities, but sometimes I need a hug.
