prose and conversations...

Engaging our neighborhood: Part 2

2010-05-28T12:19:00.000-04:00

So, I've been thinking a lot about how to engage our neighborhood. Most days, I admit, I don't know where to begin on this conversation. My co-pastor Ben is a much deeper thinker than I am on this topic.

Nonetheless, it is a burden for me that we learn to think well about the specific places we live, work, and play and how God is moving in our lives, and in the lives of our neighbors. If we don't do this, we will end up abstracting our faith into oblivion. Our faith-in-practice can become nothing more than moral platitudes that I try to live out in abstract ways. (Think about how we say its okay to 'not-like' someone, so long as we still 'love' them. What is that?!)

As I said last time, an important question is; if people had the language how would they be crying out to God? We can't really engage our neighborhood, and our neighbors, unless we are grappling with the core desires, pains, and passions of their lives.

But I also said this leaves us open to (at least) one obstacle to engaging our neighborhood faithfully.

It is this; the notion that we are the people 'in the know' and the poor neighbor next door just needs what I've got.

Now, in a way, this statement is true. In Jesus, we have encountered the one in whom we do find ultimate meaning, peace, joy etc. So, for those who have not encountered the risen Jesus in their life... sure... I guess I 'know' something they don't and that they should know. But I still think there are dangers to cultivating this attitude.

Here are a few I thought about...

1. This statement is more indicative of pity than love or compassion. I would suggest that these are not synonymous.
2. This statement tends to make divisions between us and them. Cultivating this sense of pity divides us from our neighbors, we can become paternalistic in our interactions with others, it becomes very difficult to see other people on an even level as us.
3. What do we have to learn/gain from our neighbors? Not much if we see ourselves, in any way, as superior. This same problem crops up when the only word we ever use to talk about engaging our neighborhood is 'serve.' Certainly we should serve our community, but if that's the only way we speak of it, we become the people who serve, our neighbors get served. We are not on the same level as our friends and neighbors, but we condescend to them. I guess I have to ask, is this the reality of what is happening (us condescending to our neighbors)?
4. Lastly, this attitude is sort of de-humanizing. Take 1-3 together, and our neighbors aren't so much real people, with real lives (the same as us by the way), but objects for our pity, targets for our message, and recipients of our service.

Shared life in a common place is an important value that is difficult to live out if we let these things go unchecked. It is hard to love and value our local communities and the people in them in authentic and meaningful ways if they are nothing more than our project. As I said last time, for sure, we have to ask the question of what people are longing for and what they need, it simply can't be the only question we ask.

Engaging our neighborhood: Part 1

2010-05-26T15:31:00.000-04:00

So this is our neighborhood...from the air. You can see the Gowanus expressway (thanks Mr. Moses!) that cuts us off from Sunset Park and Dyker Heights. In the bottom right corner of the expressway, just to the right of the long strip of green that is Lief Erickson Park, is our church.

And from my office here, I often sit and wonder how to engage with the whole rest of the neighborhood you see there. From our little corner of the neighborhood, the rest of our neighbors feel miles away sometimes, and it seems as though life in Bay Ridge just happens in front of me and I'm unable to really engage with the neighborhood, its life, systems and rhythms, and most of all its people in any meaningful way.

So I've been asking, how do we engage with our neighbors in meaningful, organic (perhaps normal is a better word here) ways? I meet monthly with some pastors to talk and pray and one of our questions to talk and pray through is; if people had language, how would they be crying out to God?

I like this question because it forces us to pray and ask God to show us the hidden cries of our neighborhood. It forces us to be thoughtful about who we live next to and who we share life with here by the Narrows. It forces us to depend on God to reveal what he is doing here and how we can participate in that.

Engaging the neighborhood has to involve this kind of questioning.

But these questions only get us so far. To rely on these questions sets us up to make some mistakes. There are other questions we have to ask, other ideas to consider as we think about engaging the neighborhood.

More on that soon...

A good conversation happening here

2010-05-24T11:00:00.000-04:00

So there is some good conversations happening on our community engagement blog. Check it out!

Recently, the conversation has been revolving around urban gardening. Pretty interesting stuff.

Other things I'm excited about....

1. Memorial Day at Yankee Stadium. Check out where I get to sit.
2. The summer of the grill. I've got 13 burger recipes that are the backbone of a, hopefully, great summer menu!
3. Hopefully making some new friends and connections at the Greenmarket which starts in just a few weeks.
4. The rest of this day off. (Except the dentist appt. I've got.)

where my treasure is...

2010-05-21T10:05:00.002-04:00

I'm sitting today in Madison Square Park, reading and thinking about God's Kingdom and what it says to me, to us, to the city...

I'm wrestling with it all as I watch evidence of our dominant cultural values walk by...affluence, power, beauty, leisure. Today I find it easy to believe Jesus when he says that following him will mean that we will be misunderstood, maligned and rejected.

How can the gospel of the Kingdom of God break into this well oiled machine of a culture?

Believing that it has, I come back to the question, how do I/We embody this Kingdom way?

The cost of following Jesus will inevitably involve his Spirit redefining and reshaping some of our strongest held desires...belonging and acceptance, recognition and notoriety, security and happiness. The very desires on display here in the park. There are more. I'm reminded today that the Kingdom life is about putting myself to death and walking in a new kind of life with Jesus.

I'm not content with knowing (as we narrowly define knowing) about the Kingdom. I want to live it. And now the questions start again...

A God-flooded World

2010-05-20T09:20:00.000-04:00

Recently, I've been working through Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy. (I know, to my shame, I'm just now getting to it). Anyway, I came across a couple quotes of his that hit me upside the head and hopefully it will do so for you as well!

He writes this...

[God]"is one great inexhaustible and eternal experience of all that is good and true and beautiful and right."

and this...

"Until our thoughts of God have found every visible thing and event glorious with his presence, the word of Jesus has not yet fully seized us."

What does this say to those of us, and those times for each of us, who think the world is just going to 'hell in a handbasket?' I think Willard is challenging the popularly held belief among many of us that says that the world is just going downhill and so we just have to hang on till God comes down and puts everyone in their place, cosmically.

Willard seems to be suggesting that it is the exact opposite. That God, having created everything, has left his indelible imprint on the landscape of our world and, IN ADDITION, having come to us in the person of Jesus, has brought his Kingdom of righteousness, truth, goodness, and beauty into his world that is broken by sin.

This is a reality shaping idea. How would our life with God be different if we live out this belief? How would our faith communities change if we grappled with this reality as part of our life together?

Things to be thinking about...because, as Willard says, unless we do, the gospel of Jesus hasn't gripped our imaginations yet.

niebuhr and justice...

2010-02-04T14:14:00.000-05:00

In a 1950 essay entitled, “The Spirit of Justice,” Reinhold Niebuhr wrote the following:

“Love in the form of philanthropy is, in fact, a lower level than a high form of justice. For philanthropy is given to those who make no claims against us, who do not challenge our goodness or disinterestedness. An act of philanthropy may thus be an expression of both power and moral complacency. An act of justice on the other hand requires the humble recognition that the claim that another makes against us may be legitimate.”

Earlier in the essay, he rightly notes that Christians are called to abide by the law of love as in doing so we fulfill all the laws of God (cf. Romans 13:8). Niebuhr is comparing the merits of love displayed through philanthropy (or charity) and justice. He asserts that between the two, charity is a less loving than justice. It is justice that is the highest form of love.

Niebuhr claims that philanthropy is given to those who, one, ‘make no claims against us’ and two, cannot ‘challenge our goodness or disinterestedness.’ He suggests that charity can be an expression of power. What he means is that when I give resources to someone in need, be it a homeless man on the street or an orphan in a poverty stricken country, I must recognize that doing so gives me the upper hand. Saying nothing of how I use the advantage, my charity positions me as the wealthy, or, for the moment, wealthier, benefactor in the relationship. In that way, the one receiving my charitable gift (having been given a gift) is not in a position to ask us for anything (making no claim against me) and they are also not in a position to challenge my motivation for giving charitably. (Imagine a homeless man taking some money and then accusing you of some bad motive. Wouldn’t you want to take the money back? Wouldn’t we most likely consider that our right, to retrieve what was ungratefully received?)

Niebuhr also suggests that charity does not necessarily indicate care or love for the recipient of the gift. The giver of charity is never challenged as to the level of concern they show for the receiver of their charity, the gift is the end. In fact, Niebuhr claims, charity is potentially evidence of a complete lack of moral concern. It could be nothing more than a self-congratulatory gesture.

Justice, on the other hand, is not possible from a position of self-interest. Justice, necessarily requires ‘the humble recognition that the claim that another makes against us may be legitimate.’ In other words, justice deals with larger issues of what is right, good, fair etc. The labels ‘benefactor’ and ‘beneficiary’ do not carry the same weight. Instead, the benefactor must recognize that personal and social changes must take place in order to ensure the spread of justice.

An act of justice is a way of pursuing what is actually good, and not just good for me. It seeks to promote the interests of all parties, or all of society, and not just self-interest. It takes a genuine interest in the other, and seeks to live accordingly, rather than coolly dismissing all claims others make on one’s life.

Interesting thoughts.

Certainly, charity is a good thing. It is a way of shaping our lives towards generosity. It is not something to be avoided. But charity is not an end. Niebuhr rightly challenges us to see that love without justice is not love. Love that is disinterested in the other is just selfishness. Love that exerts power is still more about me than you. He challenges us to see that love is not just a disembodied feeling, but takes on the tangible form of justice in the lives of people and in society. He challenges us the same way God challenged Israel through the prophet Isaiah. External displays of religiosity and devotion are detestable to God. Righteousness and faithfulness come through the promotion of justice.

What do you think?

realizing limitations

2009-10-25T20:57:00.000-04:00

Today, Josiah was playing in his room and he was attempting to pick up large handfuls of big lego blocks to transfer them to the other side of the room. Unfortunately, his little arms were no match for the slick plastic blocks. After time and time of failed attempts, his little faced curled up and he began to cry. As I sat there with him, all I could think was, join the club buddy, join the club.

As I grew up, people always said, You can do anything you set your mind to. I loved it when they said that, the world was open and available to me, anything I wanted I could achieve. But now, officially in my late 20's, I have not achieved the things I set my mind to when I was younger. What's more, no matter how hard I would have tried, I never would have become a professional ballplayer or platinum selling rock star. (There were significant parts of my life where these were the desires of my heart)

Of course, as my life has gone on, there have been moments where I have realized that I had reached some limitation of my natural capacities. Very much like Josiah's attempts at picking up blocks, these have been hard moments to deal with. Coming to grips with my own limitations can be heartbreaking. It's more than just the frustration of not being able to accomplish a task or achieve a dream. A person's soul can take a pretty solid blow when you realize that the horizon of 'what is possible' is somehow less expansive than it used to be. (If you've seen Napoleon Dynamite, think Uncle Rico chucking steaks at Napoleon to prove he can still throw a football.)

As I get older, I find new goals and new dreams, fresh designs on what is possible in my life. And yet, even in reshaping what I set my mind to, I still find myself dealing with my own limitations. I will never be the best thinker, writer, speaker, teacher. The life I "have set my mind to" will inevitably be tempered as time goes on.

It could be that my only option is to dispair of what I fail to achieve. There are moments when I feel that is the best option. More likely, though, I should learn to think in new ways. Instead of believing I can do anything I set my mind to, I'm trying to embrace the idea that I have limitations, and that limitations are not a sign of weakness. Because it could be that my limitations are a sign that I have been designed, specifically, for particular purposes. The living of life then is more about discovering God's intentions for me, than achieving whatever fancy strikes me on that particular day.

I wanted to just hug Josiah. I knew the kind of pain he was feeling when he bumped up against his physical limitation. In a way, dealing with these limitations is part of life. I just don't want it to be all of life.

Can you relate?

Fish Shirts and other Creature Comforts

2009-10-05T18:56:00.000-04:00

Our days are pretty hectic. We are learning to parent kids, not just kid. Amazing what a difference that little ‘s’ makes. At the end of the day, we are pretty tired. So, once these yahoos are in bed and we have had our dinner and the dishes are done, which hopefully, I’ve helped with, she comes into the family room and says with a sigh, “It’s time for the fish shirt.”

Ann has this sweatshirt that she stole from her dad when she was little. It is incredibly old. And, if we are being honest, not exactly the pinnacle of fashion. It has a cartoon fisherman standing in a boat casting his line down one of the sleeves. Midway down the right sleeve of this sweatshirt, you discover that the fisherman has hooked this enormous cartoon fish with big googly eyes.

In our house, the fish shirt has taken on almost mythological status. It is so much more than a shirt. It is a symbol that the work for the day is done and now it is time to get comfortable and relax. This shirt symbolizes the rest that both of us crave after a day of work and chasing our little ones around the house. Relaxation and rest is much harder if you aren’t in your comfy clothes. The fish shirt provides the comfort necessary for re-creation.

As diversified as fashion has become these days, most Americans are really just walking around in fish shirts. Our houses are filled with devices aimed at decreasing stress and anxiety while maximizing our comfort level (I’m sitting in one example of that as I’m writing this).

Products develop around new technologies and features aimed at increasing the level of comfort that each one can deliver the consumer. Take, for example, the car. (Disclaimer: This is not a historical account.) When it was created, the only climate control was based on what the weather was outside since you were literally in the outdoors when you were in one. So, to shield us from bad weather, we developed stronger roofs and windows.

We still had to deal with the problem of temperature, though. So, heaters were installed to keep us warm. The summer months were another problem all together. Climate control in the summer time used to mean rolling down the windows and you prayed you could air the car out before sitting down on those molten lava hot vinyl seats. But with the advent of the air conditioner, cars now had the ability to deliver the proper comfort to the whole car regardless of season, without having to roll down the windows (who has time for that anyway).

Once the mini-van came around, and I’m assuming once parents got tired of their kids moaning about how hot/cold they were, the rear climate control feature was added, allowing those in the back seat to control the force and temperature of the air flow. That however, was not enough because the driver and the passenger (for too long!) had to barter over the temperature coming from the front vents. No more though! The dual climate control feature was added now allowing everyone in the car to determine for themselves just the right temperature for them to be comfortable. (This is, of course, to say nothing of the new options made available to us by heated and cooled seats!)

We have become a highly comfortable society and thus we are driven by the pursuit of these comforts. But the question I’ve been wondering about is; how has an obsession with comfort crept into the ways we practice our faith?

In many ways, the answer is simply that we have taken something that should make us mainly uncomfortable and turned into something that helps increase our comfort. We have become very adept at turning the gospel life into the secret path to personal happiness, or a way to attain the life we have always wanted. More than the many who make a very good life telling people that God wants them to have a good life, regular, everyday Christians have trouble thinking about the gospel as something other than a way to be comfortable. I know that my actions all too often make it seem like its something I think as well.

This certainly makes it hard to see how Jesus could define the good life as giving up your life for him or for your neighbor. It makes it hard to see how taking up your cross and following him in the way of death could be anything other than a metaphor about personal humility. It makes it hard to see how Jesus could have goals outside of fixing my life and making me comfortable. It just makes it hard to see clearly.

Curiosity v. Couch: The Epic Battle

2009-10-01T14:00:00.000-04:00

My son is insatiably curious. He’s approaching 2 years old and it seems that his curiosity is fundamentally unquenchable. He is at the age where playing would really more accurately be described as exploring. When we play in his room, he roams from his toybox, to his bookshelf, to his pile of blocks, to his dresser drawers. Every stop along the way elicits the same kind of response from him. “Ohh!” and “Wow!” are his most frequently uttered words. He is constantly pulling his toys out of his toybox, almost like he’s hoping to discover something hidden in the bottom that he had forgotten about. From the moment his day starts, my son is driven by this curiosity.

Of course, this curiosity that cannot be slicked is sometimes a burden on those of us around him. Josiah quickly gets into things he shouldn’t be playing with and wants to explore drawers and cabinets full of things that 20 month old hands would more likely ruin than anything else. But even the energy we expend redirecting his pursuits is a symptom of the kind of life he lives every day. Josiah’s curiosity drives him to explore. It motivates him to find something new.

When he comes up against a boundary, either one that is due to his limited abilities or parental restraint, he comes apart at the seams. He cannot conceive of a reason why anyone would not want to experience life the way he wants to experience it. Why wouldn’t you want to go outside right now? Why would you not want to play in the dirt and eat this bug? Why wouldn’t you want to climb up on the back of the couch and teeter perilously close to the edge like this?

These are questions he cannot answer, because they are no brainers to him. Our home and the outside world are wide open spaces for him to take in all that life has to offer him. Every experience he has, every discovery he makes is proof that this is the way life is supposed to be and it drives him to find new experiences and make new discoveries until he simply cannot keep his eyes open and he falls asleep only to wake up ready to discover new worlds and hidden treasure boxes.

Now, contrast that with his dad. When I wake up in the morning, my first thought is usually something like, “How long until I get to go back to sleep?” It takes a good jog, shower and grooming session before I feel like engaging anything in a meaningful way. The mental task list that begins to compile in my brain as I am taking a shower is discouragingly long by the time I head out the door and by the time I sit down in my chair in the office, I’m already tired. At the end of a day of work, my son is running circles around me, which only serves to highlight the vast difference between his limitless curiosity and my penchant for tuning out.

Tuning out is easy when there is very little mystery left in life. At this point, I pretty much know what is in all the drawers and cabinets in my house, I don’t need to go exploring. I’ve been outside and I’ve had a few years of experience with grass, trees, dirt and bugs and I’d rather just stay inside where I can stay clean and I don’t run the risk of getting bugs on me.

I really think I’ve lost something. There was a time in my life where I would play outside exploring the world around me until it was too dark to see. I wouldn’t come inside, even if I had to go to the bathroom. I would scarf down my dinner so that I wouldn’t waste one minute of precious daylight. There was life to be lived! But now, it seems like, most days, I just sit and think about what I’m missing while I fill my time with TV shows and Facebook. Instead of being insatiably curious, more often than not, I just feel sleepy.

Remembering Whidbey: Part 1

2009-09-24T13:53:00.000-04:00

A few years ago, I flew to Washington state with some friends to attend a conference. We spent a week at an old army base called Camp Casey that was located on Whidbey Island off the coast of Seattle. We all worked together at a Christian college outside of Chicago and we were at this conference to think about things like mentoring and spiritual formation on a college campus.

To be honest, I have never experienced anything close to the happenings on the islands off the coast of Washington. Somehow, the week on Whidbey etched itself into my life and created a more meaningful experience than I think I’ve ever had.

I have to admit, I am not very good at meeting new people. I much prefer the comfort of spending time with people I know to the nervousness of connecting with people I’ve never met. So initially, this conference was a bit off-putting. It was a highly relational gathering of people who seemed to, unlike me, draw energy by connecting with new people.

Right away, I was feeling stretched. Not only were these people new, but they were professionals in the same field I was in and so I knew that I would battle my innate tendencies to compare myself with all these people for the next 5 days. They were far more experienced, thoughtful and put together than I was.

Situations like this make me feel a little bit like the kid who, no matter how hard he tries, always seems to spill his lunch on his shirt and come back from the bathroom with toilet paper on his shoe. I think I spend far too much time checking my shoes for trailing toilet paper and looking for stains on my shirt. Its hard to feel comfortable with those kinds of preoccupations.

But, alas, here I was, and I was excited, even if it manifested itself as anxiety and intimidation. What is more, the guest speaker for the first two days seemed interesting. He was a big man with long curly hair. He was dressed like he had just gotten off a sailboat but his hands were so big it looked like he made a living hacking out canoes from tree trunks. And he was the president of a graduate school to boot. He seemed like a bit of a wild card so I was excited to see what he was all about.

After dinner together, he got up and began telling stories. Better stories than I had ever heard. He told us a story about how he would pick up loose change that people drop and keep it, but then offer it back in exchange for some conversation. Who does that? I liked it a lot. Then he told us about what we were going to be doing the next day. He said we would be walking through our lives and digging up all the pain and hurt and joys and delights of our past and putting it all together to see if we could make sense out of what God was doing with our lives.

So the anxiety was back. I had been had. He lured me in with his funny and compelling tales of bribing old ladies to talk to him on the bus and then he drops the bomb, we were going to have to be honest with each other and with ourselves about our lives. I wish I could remember looking around the room at the others there at that moment. Looking back, I sort of imagine myself begin to curl up in a ball, trying to protect myself from the inevitable process we were going to walk through together.

For now, though, the night was over, and I could go back to telling jokes with David and Greg, watching the waves hit the pebble covered beach, getting transfixed by the campfire, and thinking deeper thoughts than I normally do. This was a better day than most.

on feeding tubes and incubators

2009-09-23T14:40:00.001-04:00

When my second son was born, just a few weeks ago, he had a few complications and so the doctors sent him to the NCU for a few days of close observation. During that time, he wasn’t eating enough from a bottle so the doctors inserted a feeding tube down his little throat to make sure he was getting enough nutrients. They kept him in one of those little plexiglass incubator boxes that regulates the temperature and had him attached to various machines in order to monitor his vitals.

This was all emotionally taxing to see, but the hardest thing was watching him using the feeding tube. It felt very unnatural. He wasn’t supposed to be able to exist on his own in this little box, he was supposed to come home with us and need us to care for him and need my wife to feed him. This other thing just wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. This felt like artificial independence to me.

I think about that when I hear people talking about being independent Christians. Churches have started using the phrase ‘self-feeders’ when they talk about the goals of their discipleship program. The idea is that Christians should be totally independent people, completely capable of existing on their own...spiritually speaking.

(Now I will admit that far too many people feel like they cannot survive unless they have a pastor teaching them. They simply don’t believe they can understand Scripture unless someone who has a fancy degree tells them what it means. I understand why pastors and church leaders would want to wean people away from cognitive dump spiritual growth and toward a dynamic personal life with God. There are many benefits to training people to think, study and pray for themselves.)

But I have begun to wonder if we have missed something significant along the way to becoming self-feeding Christians. I’m wondering if we have come to think that Christian maturity is synonymous with Christian independence. The most mature Christians will be the ones who do not need anyone else to maintain spiritual vitality. To put it another way, to depend on someone else is to demonstrate a lack of maturity in faith.

I’ve come to see this as artificial independence. It’s kind of like we champion the idea that the strongest in our communities are the ones who are solidly encased in a plexiglass incubator with feeding tubes down their throats. So we all strive for that. We want to be satiated and comfortable within the confines of our meticulously controlled spiritual eco-system. We do not need anyone to feed us, we are capable of feeding ourselves. No wonder people think they don’t need to be a part of the family of God... they really don’t.

This is where we have missed something. We have missed the fact that we aren’t supposed to be able to exist on our own. We are supposed to genuinely need each other. What if we extracted the feeding tubes from our throats and stepped out of our climate controlled incubators? What if my spiritual journey was less about ensuring that I am fed and focused more on feeding my sisters and brothers? What if I stopped asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’ and began to ask, ‘What’s in me for you?’

Two things would happen I think.

1. We would learn what it means to be generous.

Asking a different question might lead us down new roads and help us explore what a real generosity of life looks like. It means that we would learn to orient our lives around giving grace, showing mercy, extending forgiveness, pursuing shalom, and helping others flourish. This would be a way to practice giving up my life for the sake of the ones in my community. Imagine what kind of communities we would have if we came into them practicing that kind of generosity.

2. We would learn what it means to trust.

As you may have been thinking all along, if I take out the feeding tube and start feeding others, won’t I starve? Well, not necessarily. However, instead of being artificially independent, you will have to trust the sisters and brothers who gather around you in community. You will have to entrust your spiritual vitality to them and God’s Spirit working through them. That may be hard to do, but real community will never be easy.

(I’m not saying that we don’t practice spiritual disciplines or pursue personal spiritual formation. What I’m saying is that we miss something if we view personal spiritual transformation as the only end of our spiritual journey, and that we might be surprised how much God shapes us as we give our lives to our communities.)

Learning to entrust ourselves to the community of God is one way we learn that real faith is about cultivating dependence, just like my son is living a more human existence because he is dependent on us for everything. As my son grows he will need different kinds of support from us, he will always need us, just in different ways. As much as society may tell us the goal of life is independence, it seems to me that the goal of the life of faith is to realize what real dependence looks like. Human independence doesn’t seem to be all that human to me. We flourish when we are connected to one another, because its not good for us to be alone...

where would I fit on the pyramid?

2009-09-21T21:45:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in a local diner, having a breakfast meeting with Ben. We were discussing all forms of ministry and life related issues when next to us a conversation got so loud it was impossible not to hear. Two young adults were discussing what immediately became clear as a high school cheerleading team. Presumably, these two were coaches, advisors, or maybe camp directors. That I will never know. What I do know is that the conversation made me as sad as I have been in a while. As plain as day, one coach said to the other, "What do you do with the ugly girl? You put her in the back where she belongs."

No joke, direct quote. Ben and I sat there stunned. Walking around today has left me wondering...where would I have gotten placed in the pyramid? Where would any of us have gotten placed? I'm pretty sure our hearts couldn't handle hearing the answer to that question... What does it say about the world when the ones given charge over our young people use that kind of matrix to make decisions? What hope do any of us have if that's the message being sent to all of us? Is there any wonder people make some of the decisions they do when that kind of garbage shapes the way we see the world? Most days the world is harsh and ugly, and people who think like that only make it harsher and uglier.

Today is a sad day. Perhaps no more sad than other days, but the cold, vicious nature of the "real" world was simply booked on the main stage this morning. Personally, I'm tired of the main stage being filled by this kind of act. Acts that disregard real, honest humanity in favor of culturally embedded and captive ways of thinking that are as shallow as Josiah's kiddie pool out back. Acts that fail to see that we have allowed movie stars to determine the value of a human being and that we have in large part just accepted their determinations because we like the flavor of their Kool-Aid.

There is only one thing that keeps my head above the water on days like today. That (to quote Jason Gray), everything sad is coming untrue. Everything sad is coming untrue. That buoys my spirit, because I remember that Jesus asked people who weren't the best and the most beautiful to follow him, he asked regular gals and guys, people who likely would have been "in the back, where they belonged" by anyone else's estimation, these folks had a place in Jesus' movement. The scene in the diner this morning is no surprise, right?

I think Ben was right, perhaps there is no better reason for us to invest ourselves in the world (our schools, our neighbors and our neighborhoods) than simply to be a different voice, a voice that says, "There is another way. You don't have to be defined by these silly and shallow notions of what beauty is and what gives you self-worth... ...there are other ways of seeing the world. There are other definitions of what true beauty is, different ways of measuring how much value you truly have..." Come to think of it, I think I'll move to the back of the pyramid anyway, I'm not sure I want to be chosen to be the lead in this play...the scary part is, most days I feel like I play the part all too well.

on following

2009-03-06T11:16:00.001-05:00

I have been thinking this week about the ways we follow Jesus, and I began wondering…what if we followed Jesus the way we watch TV? To me, that’s an interesting question and the answer is, it would be really nice if we followed Jesus the way we watch TV, wouldn’t it?

Think about it.

Following Jesus would be very convenient. TV’s can be turned on and off anytime we want. If following Jesus were that way, that would mean that we could listen to Jesus when we wanted to, or if we didn’t feel like it, we wouldn’t have to. It means that we could choose the most convenient time to spend time with Jesus too. We could fit him into our schedule. It wouldn’t be a matter of trying to live life with Jesus it would be trying to find space in our life for Jesus.

TV affords us lots of choices. We can channel surf all day, just looking for something that interests us. If following Jesus was like that, it would mean that we could develop selective hearing when it comes to Scripture. If there are parts of Scripture we don’t like to think about (like thinking about sin), that make us uncomfortable (like thinking about loving sinners) that bore us (like the OT), or that we don’t understand (like Revelation), we could ignore those.

When I watch TV, I camp out on the Food Network and ESPN, and maybe PBS if theres a good documentary on, that is what I love to watch. If following Jesus was like watching TV, then I could just camp out on the parts of Scripture that I liked the best (Like when Jesus says he came to save us, or when he does exciting miracles).

If following Jesus was like this, that would mean that I could decide how to follow him. Since I can choose what I listen to and what I don’t listen to, that means that I can personalize the way that I follow him. A custom-made discipleship program, not unlike many of the products marketed to us through our TV sets.

TV is also pretty comfortable. I can watch TV at home, relaxing on the couch. Watching TV doesn’t require much, except maybe a bowl of popcorn. What if following Jesus was as comfortable as watching TV? Well, it would mean that it wouldn’t require much. I don’t have to respond to TV when I watch it, I can just take it in. That would mean that I wouldn’t have to respond to Jesus either, I could just listen to what he says and that would be good enough, I wouldn’t have to respond in any particular way to what he says.

Watching TV is something I can do alone or in a group, really the choice is up to me. If following Jesus was like that, it would mean that community would be an option. It would give me the freedom to choose if I wanted to follow Jesus on my own or as part of a group, and there wouldn’t really be any consequences to that decision, either way, I’m just going to be sitting on the couch sort of passively taking in what Jesus says, I’ve already said I wouldn’t have to worry about responding to it or anything, so whether I’m alone or in a group really has little bearing on the way I follow Jesus.

TV is about entertaining me. If following Jesus was like that, it would mean that Jesus is all about entertaining me. It would mean that his whole purpose for doing what he did was to make me happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise. Whatever other aims or goals he had would take a backseat to the fact that he came first and foremost, to make my life better.

And when I watch TV, I hold the remote I’m in charge. What if I was in charge of the relationship between me and Jesus? I wouldn’t have to take orders from him. In fact, I could give some orders. “Jesus, I’d like for you to do this for me, Jesus, when are you going to get around to fixing that in my life?” If I held the “remote” in the relationship, I could turn him on and off whenever I wanted. I could change the channel to something else if I didn’t like what he had to say.

In a sense, if following Jesus was like watching TV, then following Jesus would always be done on my terms. I would be the one who could set the agenda, decide what I hear and how I respond. I would be the one who controls the relationship if following Jesus was like watching TV.

I get the sense that many Christians today really do follow Jesus like we all watch TV. We really value convenience and choice and so we want to be able to fit Jesus into our schedules and we like having lots of ways to follow him, so we can choose the way the works best for us. It is an appealing thing to think that following Jesus would be easy. As a culture we like getting something for nothing, and there are times when we apply that way of thinking to the way we follow Jesus, where we look for maximum blessing benefits with no money down. Mainly though, I think Christians, many times, tend to try and follow Jesus without giving up the remote. We end up being followers of Jesus who end up telling Jesus how we want to follow him. We want to follow Jesus, but we want to do it on our terms.

And what does that say about us? What does it say about us that we are people who want to follow Jesus, but we want to be the ones who set the agenda for the way we are going to follow him? Well, I think it says that we are human.

why Sunday is the easiest day of the week

2009-02-16T16:03:00.002-05:00

I recognize that it has been a while since I have posted, well over a month. Given the fact that my previous post promised more consistent blogging and this blog represents something far less consistent, I must be forced to admit that I have not yet mastered the idea of blogging. Life has gotten busier, no doubt about that, Josiah learning to walk and talk, not to mention the fact that everyday I am surprised by some new layer of my position. That is what drove me here today.

I find that the easiest day of the week is Sunday...by a landslide. If you are a pastor this might, I guess, make sense, but my guess is most people won't get it. But you see Sunday is neat and tidy. I wake up on a Sunday and...my sermon is written and ready, my partners in ministry prepare the rest of the details, I don't have extra meetings or appointments. I simply wake up, clean up, and stand up and "do what I do." Of course, there is much more that goes into a Sunday, conversing with people, listening to ideas and making decisions on the fly (not something I recommend), meeting new people and hearing people tell me the stories of their lives. By Sunday, I have everything figured out (read a bit of sarcasm). When I stand up on Sunday's my ideas are as clear as they are going to be. When I greet my brothers and sisters, I do as one who wants to welcome them into our community. All of my Sunday stations put me in a position to be clear and hospitable.

Now, enter Monday through Saturday. This is a different story. Monday through Saturday I sit in the mess of life. I don't mean other people's lives, but my life, your life, our life...this thing we call life is messy and I live in it, just as everyone does, I guess, every day of the week. I sit in the mess of life's questions, not just because I am wondering and discovering, but I want to help other people wonder and discover as well. I wrestle with ideas about following Jesus and wonder why I seem to do it with a limp all the time and wonder how I should go about helping people discover a communal life with God (and in writing communal I realized that the word I've used most frequently in this post is I, so apparently I have a long way to go too).

What I mean to say, is that I am realizing that following Jesus well, really well, is all about living in all kinds of tension. Created for purposes we won't fulfill, being a cracked version of who and what I'm supposed to, bent toward doing my own thing than ever wanting to submit to anything, and all the while being remade in the image of God, being restored back to the kind of creature I'm supposed to be. And that makes life messy. (That sounded really trite when I just wrote it, sorry).

Pastoring broken-but-being-fixed people in a broken-but-being-fixed world as a broken-but-being-fixed person myself means that Monday through Saturday I don't have it all figured out. Things don't always happen properly, and I don't always respond with great aplomb (thanks Andy Bernard). So, as a friend of mine is continually saying, we just have to respond to Jesus. Though I am, in some ways, a vision kind of guy, I am finding myself further and further away from a clear picture of preferred futures. But that is the nice thing about being a part of the gospel of the Kingdom of God, the preferred future is already written and the vision is cast. My job in life is to be faithful in moving toward Jesus toward the Kingdom. My second job is to help those I love to do the same thing.

On my wall, I have a picture labeled leadership. The caption says, A leader is...it continues. But I covered it up. It now reads, A leader is TBD. I'm going to keep trying to respond to Jesus. I'll answer the "a leader is" question, when I get to where I'm going...or at least a bit further down the road.

back and forward

2009-01-08T14:36:00.002-05:00

To date, 2008 (that rhymes if you are reading aloud, if you are not, please begin again out loud) has been the most eventful year of all my years. I was going to put together some kind of reflective list of events, but Andrew's wonderful posts on albums frightens me from trying to measure up so mine will take paragraph form.

Even though, technically, Josiah was born in 2007, given the "New Year's Eve-ity" of his arrival I am going to call that 2008. (I don't think I have to use the same criteria as the IRS but I will get back to you on that.) Josiah's life is now officially a year old and I think he's happy with it. For the purposes of this blog, I am happy with it. The process of dad-ing has taught me a lot about sacrifice and love, mostly though I guess from observing his mom.

Also, I graduated seminary in 2008. The prospect of changing degrees from what might be termed (incorrectly, I think) the grand pooh-bah of seminary degrees to what might be termed (incorrectly, I think) the grand pooh-bah's step brother of seminary degrees was actually an easy decision. I had no idea why I was choosing the new direction, I just knew it was a good decision. (See below) I learned much during my time at Trinity. Extra special thanks to friends and mentors who walked with me through the four hardest years of trying to listen and watch for God that I've had.

In retrospect, had I not decided to get a different degree, I would not now live in New York City. The biggest event in our married life involved a moving truck, three large metal pods, a minivan (oh yeah, I caved and got a minivan this year too) full of people and possessions, and enough anxiety to make Joe Montana nervous under pressure. I accepted a pastoral position in Brooklyn, but for the single-digit number of visitors to this blog, you all already know that.

The question I keep being asked, Can you believe you live where you do?, is a common thought in my head. Yet it is testimony to the fact that this life with God is never boring and that we should in fact expect the unexpected. We have made a number of "risky" decisions this year and it is safe to say that 2008 will go down as one of the best of our lives.

Looking forward, I have some goals for this year. I sense some areas in my life that I want to learn to do better. To that end, I have given myself a writing assignment to sharpen my skills with this keyboard. My goal is to make a bit of weekly progress on the project. Thus, the blog entries over the next 8-9 months will likely take shape around this project. Advent was a difficult time to find time to write, but my hope is that I will develop a stronger ability to discipline myself to refine thoughts until they are word-worthy.

Other goals...
1. (okay, I have caved on the list idea) Explore the city...expect some blogging on this.
2. Read, at least, two books a month outside of sermon related reading.
3. Master the art of cooking. (This is probably impossible, but at least master some good dishes and techniques).

That's all for now.

ag

on not getting things done and other thoughts.

2008-12-10T17:39:00.004-05:00

We are beginning to re-think the idea that efficiency is something to be highly valued. I could list, I won't but I could, a number of wonderful moments in our lives here thus far that would have been swept away or ignored had we been evaluating them based on their expediency or their "cost-benefit' ratio. The efficient minister, or at least I would be this way if I prioritized efficiency, stands to miss many important moments in the name of getting things done. (I think though to really value inefficiency, I do have to get better at being focused so that I create space for inefficiency...clearing the urgent so I can see the important etc...) Thoughts?

I read this statement today...Humility is the ultimate expression of courage...hmmm? I think I will chew on that sentence for many days to come...

I also really like the idea of cultivation...I'm reading a book that uses that idea as a framework for leadership...makes sense, gotta keep thinking.

Christmas ethos makes me really happy; trees, fireplaces, old movies, cookies and white elephant parties...it is hard to beat this time of year. I just hope that I am not wringing the import of the season by detaching these ideals from Immanuel. (On the other hand, I am simultaneously participating in the rhythms of advent more fully than I ever have, pretty reflective month so far)

Congrats to Travis on 10,000 days, may you have tens of thousands more. Congrats to Gator and fam on the expansion project, may you have tens of thousands more...

more than the nightwatchman waits for the morning

2008-12-02T14:22:00.002-05:00

"My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning..."

A night watchman waits in the dark. He paces slowly, methodically, through his appointed rounds. The only sound he wants to hear is the click of his shoes hitting the floor as he guards his post through the night. Any other sound is out of the ordinary. Any other sound means something is wrong.

The night is fraught with fear. He waits for the courage morning brings. The night is full of anxiety. He longs for the peace that comes with the sunrise. The night has many friends with names like uncertainty, suspicion and worry. Daybreak chases them away.

But daybreak is still hours away and the night watchmen must watch the hours between sundown and sunup. The rhythm of his rounds helps the watchman count down the hours…minutes…seconds until morning. Until his fear and anxiety are slicked in the warm flood of light that finds its way through the windows.

What if there were no morning for the night watchman? What if the long, dark loneliness of night didn’t end with the redemption of the morning? What if the night continued forever? The watchman asks these questions to himself as he tiptoes around the corners of the dark building, hoping to find each hallway as empty as the one prior. The night watchman probably wonders if night will ever end as the beam from his flashlight is seemingly swallowed up by the oppressive darkness midnight carries with it. With each corner turned and each room examined, the watchman’s longing for morning grows stronger and stronger. If there is no morning, there is only despair.

"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned."

And then there is dawn. The fearful darkness flees from the light of day. Once dark objects take shape again and the fearful uncertainty of night is replaced by the joy that morning has come and the hope that it will come again tomorrow…the next day…every day.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning….In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

on the search for a third space

2008-11-18T14:07:00.002-05:00

I was reading a while back about the idea of the "third space." Interesting idea. The idea is presented that most people have three distinct places in their lives, distinct arenas, or stages where the drama of life unfolds. The first two are obvious, home and work. The interesting thing to me is the idea of the third space. In this final space, people, the theory goes, search for a place of belonging, a place to relax, to spend leisure time, to give their down time a context or meaning.

Third spaces are everywhere, diners, bars, coffee shops, book stores...the list goes on as endlessly as there are creative people who find places to belong. People need these kind of spaces, away from home and work where "everybody knows your name..." There is something about this sense of belonging that really drives people to be a regular at the corner diner or the neighborhood pub.

In many ways, the church is a third space. The church is a place away from home and work where people find a place to belong and gives context and meaning to life. Interestingly, the church is the only place that, should, attempt to dump those people back out into the wilderness of life to engage people in their own third spaces. In that sense, the church is really more of a 2.5 space, as it exists as a hospitable place of welcome and belonging, but so that each one might better live outside of the space itself. This is different than the coffee shop or pub. Those spaces equip you to stay inside and do nothing about life outside the space itself. The church challenges Christians to live well in other people's third spaces.

As a pastor, the challenge for me is that church is not only my place of belonging but also my place of employment. The past 2.5 months have been a search for another space, coffee shop, diner, library, some place that I might be a regular, so as to intersect lives with other people. The search has been frustrating so far, although that is probably due more to unreasonable ideals than anything else. But it feels to me like this is an important step for me. I need to find a place, not because I lack a sense of belonging, but because the gospel calls me to live well in other people's third spaces...the search continues.

an examined life: on asking questions

2008-11-04T11:00:00.002-05:00

Lately, I have been wondering whether or not I am good question asker. I am afraid of being someone who lives life with their head stuck in the sand, hoping problems will pass by without my knowing. There are many days when I feel numb to the hard questions that life poses or at least would pose if I would allow it to. It is, to me, troubling to be naive or unthoughtful. I don't want to follow Jesus unthinkingly (I'm not sure that is a word, but you get the point).

The reason is that an unexamined life seems to me to be an indefensible life. How can I answer questions posed to me by others if I have not thought about them on my own? How can I give reasons for anything; my values, convictions, opinions, my hopes, dreams etc. unless I have taken time to really consider them myself? If I am challenged on a particular piece of my worldview, how am I to respond unless I have taken time to examine my life, or made an effort to be a thoughtful follower of Jesus?

In my opinion, the answer is, I can't. Unexamined lives rely on pithy statements or cliches to get them through life's questions. Even if the statements and cliches are in some sense true, the truth of it is probably lost in my casual casting of it.

The challenge for me is the fear of what I will find. If I really start to grapple with life's hard questions, or the difficulties and obstacles to faith; what will I find? For me, the temptation to live a numb, unexamined life is fueled by a combination of a desire to be comfortable (that is probably code for lazy, I'll get back to you on that) and this fear or apprehension of what I will find if I explore these questions deeply. I have seen far too many people abandon principle at the hand of intellectual exploration, and so part of me is probably afraid of where I will find myself if I start to ask good questions.

I don't, however, think this releases me from this challenge of examining my life (by that I, of course, mean everything about my life). If I really trust that God is the God of the universe then he is probably unfazed by my feeble attempts at understanding. I am probably not going to stump him. If he promises to walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death, then he will probably walk with me through the valley of my curiosity too.

I have also learned that I have to have a healthy distrust of myself in this process as well. What I mean is, my logic has often proved illogical and my feelings have often betrayed reality. So, in that, it is entirely possible that answers to my curiosities lie outside the bounds of my oft stunted logic and regularly manic emotions. At the same time, those are the best discerning tools I have on my own. I guess faith is, in some way, the intersection of where my reasoning faculties end and the Spirit's voice begins. Perhaps that is what it looks like to lean on something other than my own understanding alone.

I think God would honor and welcome the earnest pursuit of knowing Him like that, I just hope I have the courage to ask about it sometime...

season ending reflections

2008-10-30T16:46:00.003-04:00

Well, another season has come and gone. The greatest game in the world has once again crowned a champion and a city waiting decades for a championship gets to savor the taste of victory. Congrats.

The other day I saw a commercial advertising hi-def television and it used baseball as its marketing ploy. The man buys an HDTV and all of a sudden he experiences baseball in all new ways...his nostrils are singed and he is blown away by the blistering baseball action he now experiences due to the wonders of modern technology.

I don't know about you, but I have never experienced baseball in this way. I don't know of anyone who ever has. It is not that baseball is not exciting. It certainly has its moments that keep you on the edge of your seat. But, in the main, that isn't what baseball is about. This game is not about the fast-paced, it is about the methodical. It isn't about packing every second with movement, it is about creating space for reflection and conversation. Baseball is a game devoted to intricacy, not smashmouth action. To suggest that a TV can help you capture this kind of action is to suggest you can catch something that isn't there in the first place.

You cannot love baseball for the same reasons you love football. If you try to love baseball for the action, you will have little to love. Baseball is about stories. Baseball is about heros and believing in something bigger than yourself. Devotion to baseball teams is arguably unrivaled in American sport today. The traditions of baseball is where fans find their love of this game. Players, coaches, writers, and fans all find their place in the larger story of what this sport means to the history of our culture in America.

Baseball provides a common thread through your life. When I tune a radio to a baseball game, I remember falling asleep to Jack Buck or Mike Shannon on hot summer nights when I was a kid. Trying so hard to stay awake just to picture the game happening right before me. Loving baseball today connects me to my past, in a way, baseball provides the setting for my story.

How many of my memories are tied to baseball? How often has a silly game brought me incredible joy or tears? Why do I care so much about a game, or a team? Something inside me craves the feeling of belonging to something...even if I'm disappointed, it's safe because they come back next year. Until then...

distractions

2008-10-24T11:03:00.006-04:00

Sitting down to write today is hard, not because I don't have something to write, but because I have too many things to write. My heart has been on a roller coaster ride the last few weeks. I find myself discouraged by the chaotic world and the fear we all seem to breathe in like oxygen about crumbling markets and presidential hopefuls. But simultaneously, I am wrestling with what it means to be a child of God, a citizen of his kingdom, and oftentimes my spirits are bouyed. My idealism has taken hits over time, but God has faithfullly repaired the hits in the part of me I treasure most.

In the end, I know that being a part of what God is doing in the world is an ideal that I want, more than anything, to spend my life for. Not because I enjoy being on the right side of things, or take pleasure in trusting that it is the "winning" side. But rather, because I fully believe that God's kingdom is about restoring what seems so chaotic right now. It is about delving into the mess and restoring its beauty. It is about pushing back what is wrong and shining a light on what is good. God is working to bind up the broken, to befriend the lonely, to kneel down next to the broken down stepped ons of society and help them back up. When I read of Jesus and try my best to listen and understand him, I don't see someone bent on flashy argumentation or legislative evangelism, but someone who so embodied the compassion of his father that it seeped out of everything he did. When he said he came to declare the year of the Lord's favor, he announces that the kingdom is here and is for good things; hope, love, justice, redemption...that list goes on.

I have been speaking lately about having eyes to see God and to see his work happening before us, but how difficult it is to make that a priority. As I was reading this morning, I was struck by something I had not thought of before. I was struck that my participation in the kingdom is not just a matter of obedience, but it is the way I encounter what is good, true and beautiful. As I labor, I experience the goodness of God. So I need not fear the chaos...God give me eyes to see you clearly amidst my muddied life.

a surprising hospitality

2008-10-16T16:29:00.009-04:00

I guess that I really have not been all that surprised by my new life here in Brooklyn. If anything, it has been underwhelming. Underwhelming in the sense that I thought, or perhaps more accurately, most people thought I would think, that moving to the city would be the most overwhelming step I would take in life.

And yet it has not. Very quickly, this place has felt like home and the hustle/bustle of the city has not been intimidating. Instead, I have felt that the constant to and fro of the people in my new neighborhood has been life giving to me. I find myself invigorated by it.

The invigoration of the city seems to stem from the curiosity aroused by my new surroundings. If I sat on the same corner of the same street everyday for a month I am sure that, every day, I would learn significant lessons about my neighborhood and the way people choose to align their lives here. I am fascinated by the confluence of cultures; the irreligious and the devout, those that possess and those that desire, the young and the old, those that have called this place home all their life and those who may be freshly minted U.S. citizens...

There seems to be a sense of shared identity that people have simply by their geographical location that is uncommon in my experience. In that, despite the vast differences that are easy to observe in others, there are many common values and factors in play here as well. I had a conversation this summer where a particular man said to me something along the lines of "People all over think New Yorkers aren't friendly, but I have experienced the exact opposite. People here are the nicest, warmest and most open people I have met." Is this something more than hometown pride? After all, don't most people tout the distinctives of a town they come from? I did, after all, come from a town that is home to a certain insurance giant and a giant in the world of brilliant tasting steak burgers. We brag about that where I come from. Is this the same thing?

Perhaps not. The kindness of the people in my neighborhood is observable. In our world, just being able to see it is something. People open themselves to one another in ways I have not observed in the other contexts I have lived. Of course, there are stereotypical car horns and aged curmudgeons, but in the main people have an air of openness about them that seems to demonstrate what my friend had said.

Except for me. For some reason, people have walked by me a bit more coolly than they walk by my wife. My wife had a 15 minute conversation on the street with someone recently, instigated by that person. That has never happened to me, except in cases where I instigate or when I am with my son (but I am still convinced they are warm to him and not me).

But I have noticed an interesting thing. In the cases where I attempt to instigate some kind of warmth or openness with a passer-by; they respond very favorably, but it jolts them. So far, it is my experience that, in the main, people are surprised by the gesture coming from me. I have to ask a couple questions here. Are people surprised by the gesture of hospitality alone or are people surprised by the fact that the sender of said gesture is a young man? Whatever the reason, the relief and exuberance of the response to my "hello" helps me to confirm the suspicion that the cold passings I normally experience are not due to the people I walk by but perhaps due to the low expectations of what that person might receive in return.

I wonder what that means for what I spend myself doing everyday. Perhaps people really do crave real hospitable spaces where they can be known for who they are and where they can explore paths toward being more than they are so far, but they are afraid of the response they will get if they open themselves by reaching out with the first proverbial head nod or "hello." Perhaps the general lack of welcoming spaces in our world today insulates that longing in people so that it is hard to recognize.

"Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden. Take up my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." What does that mean for the people who follow Jesus?