Overcoming Incommensurability

Posted on January 7, 2008 by Richard Heyduck

Christian Amondson has an interesting post on issues of incommensurability, i.e., how communication can happen across narratival boundaries. Here’s my comment:

Do we want to say that the incommensurability between the Christian world/narrative is essentially different from the incommensurability that exists between other worlds?

Some worlds are thin enough that they are by necessity incommensurable. Football and baseball are so thin that though both are sports/games, there is no room for overlap, no way to sensibly (from either perspective) play both at the same time.

When it comes to Christianity and other worlds/narratives I have a few ideas.

  1. Those of us that inhabit the Christian narrative also inhabit other narratives. While our primary allegiance may be to Jesus and his story, we are also always immersed in other stories, our broader culture in particular. Because of this we, at the very least, jostle up against those whose primary allegiance lies in a story other than Jesus’.
  2. God is a participant in the ongoing Christian story. As that story impinges on other stories through those of us who embody it, our jostling with participants in other stories is more than just us. Through us God is invading their territory.
  3. There is no guarantee that the sense God might make to the inhabitants of other narratives through us will make any sense to us. It’s also likely that what God does won’t make sense to the inhabitants of those other traditions. BUT – and I think this is important – the non-sense that God’s work through us makes can serve as a crowbar to pry open their eyes (I speak figuratively) and arouse questions that can draw them to Christ.
  4. One of the chief forms of jostling that we see in Scripture is suffering. Thinking of 1 Peter, we see the admonition to always be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have. While I was long taught that this meant (roughly), “Study the Josh McDowell books so you can quote their arguments to non-believers,” the context is actually critically different. Rather than assuming the issues are primarily intellectual, Peter’s assumption is that by following Jesus we’ll run smack into the world and suffer for doing so. But the Christian way of embracing suffering will be so non-sensical and strange to outsiders that they’ll be compelled to ask questions. THAT’S when our answers come in.
  5. Finally, I’m not a Barthian. I think God as creator plays a role in every culture or narrative out there. The role may be deeply hidden, hard to find,  unpredictable. But some how, in some way, God will be there pointing the way to Christ. So when we come along – whether in strength or weakness (if the NT picture is normative and not merely descriptive, weakness will be more common than strength) – and impinge on or jostle with their narrative/world, then it can be an occasion for God saying, “See! This is what I was trying to tell you about!”
Posted in Culture, Evangelism, Theology | 4 Comments

Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations: Radical Hospitality

Posted on January 2, 2008 by Richard Heyduck

Radical Hospitality is the first of the Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations. That’s evangelism in plain Christianese. This is probably the new jargon I like the least. “Radical” is ok, but hospitality just seems weak in our current context. It seems too easily reducible to friendliness and pot-lucks, too close to the pseudo-gospel of inclusion.

Friendliness is a good thing. I’d rather my people be friendly than unfriendly. When outsiders come our way I’d like them to feel like we’re happy to see them. Too many outsiders visit churches and go away without a single friendly word. That’s horrible. But there is nothing particularly Christian about friendliness.

I like pot-lucks. Some people like their food to be pure. Meat. Potatoes. Vegetables. Salad. Fruit. I like mine all mixed up – a conglomeration of tastes and textures. The great thing about pot-lucks is the wide variety. The downside is small plates (or needing to work it off the next day). As a sign of fellowship, pot-lucks are hard to beat. But there is nothing particularly Christian about pot-lucks.

I even like inclusion. A church with more than one culture or socio-economic group cuts against the grain of mainstream culture (whatever culture that is) so well that it functions as an effective sign of the power of the gospel. But merely abstract inclusion is not the gospel.

When I think of essential practices of the church I think of making disciples who become disciple makers. We help people come to faith in Christ and begin following him. While connecting with the institution of the church is an essential part of salvation, a part too often left out in modernity, it is not the whole of salvation. Since it’s so easy to read “radical hospitality” as pertaining solely to the church (as institution), I think we need to do more.

Though I’m not excited about the phrase, I think Bishop Schnase handles the concept pretty well. He says, “Christian hospitality refers to the active desire to invite, welcome, receive, and care for those who are strangers so that they can find a spiritual home and discover for themselves the unending richness of life in Christ.” In this he seems to indicate a broader view of hospitality than the truncated common today.

One quibble: He says, “People need to know God loves them that they are of supreme value, and that their life has significance.” Other than the grammatical confusion (the plurality of “people” and the singularity of “life”), I don’t know that people are of supreme value. This is like the maxim I’ve long heard, “If you were the only one who needed salvation, God still would have sent his Son to die for you.” That sure sounds nice, but I don’t see it in scripture. There were plenty of sinners who lived (and died) before Jesus came on the scene. It has never been the case that there was only one sinner and God sent the Son to save that one person. God’s love for sinners is great, so great that God became human in the person of Jesus, dying on the cross for our salvation. That’s great value, but I don’t know if it is supreme value. I just have trouble being that human centered.

In the end, that is only a quibble. Churches know they need to win people to Christ – to hospitably welcome people into the Kingdom. But they don’t do it – at least not very much. We have pot-lucks and committee meetings, we fight over carpet, we even have evangelism trainings. But for the most part we avoid evangelism, actually representing Jesus to people who don’t know him. We need to repent and get to work.

Posted in Diversity, Evangelism, Five Practices, Ministry, United Methodism | 1 Comment

Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, 1

Posted on December 31, 2007 by Richard Heyduck

Robert Fritz says Creative Tension is produced by the gap between a strongly held vision and a willingness to tell the truth about the present. Like many pastors, I have a strong vision to reach people for Christ: to help people become followers of Jesus and to grow as his disciples. I want that not only in my own ministry, but in the ministry of my congregation. I want it not only in my own congregation, but throughout the United Methodist Church. I want it not only in the United Methodist Church, but in other churches as well. I have a firm conviction that we humans have been created to follow Jesus.

But we’re not. Not only are many of us humans not following Jesus – not only those folks outside the church, but plenty of us on the inside – but we’re not doing so well at making disciples. To put it simply, there is a large gap between my vision and current reality.

Since my vision (or close variants) is shared by many pastors, there has been a large market for books, magazines, seminars and workshops on ideas for ministry. Evidently our current methods are not working, so we need new methods. Over the last couple of decades the idea industry has gotten a fair amount of my money. I haven’t seen much return on my investment, however. While it may be that I’m simply not very competent at idea implementation (and apparently I’m not alone since the surge of idea literature and workshops doesn’t seem to have had much effect on the church at large), my own conclusion has been that new ideas – for the most part – are not what we need. Instead, we need to focus on doing the basics with skill, intelligence, determination, and heaps of prayer. That’s what I lie about Bishop Robert’s Schnase’s approach in Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations.

Schnase’s book – and the variants I’ve heard elsewhere – are not idea driven. He focuses on practices basic to congregational life: Radical Hospitality, Passionate Worship, Intentional Faith Development, Risk-Taking Mission and Service, and Extravagant Generosity. There’s nothing new here, nothing most church leaders will need a workshop or seminar to learn. You won’t need to be “trained” to do these things. (By “training” I’m referring to the many programs out there that have come on line of late that require leaders to go off and be trained before they are qualified to participate.)

In my reading, The Five Practices was not at all informative. There were no Aha! moments, no occasions when I said to myself, “That’s a great idea!” Every pastor out there knows we and our churches need to do these things. Knowing isn’t the problem. Doing is the problem. We know what we need to do, we just don’t do it. In fact, I’d even suggest that in many cases our new ideas (often mere gimmicks) have served as a substitute for doing what we need to do. If ideas books are about the How of church life, this book is about the What.

When we see the gap between our vision and current reality – and experience the futility of the many roads that claim to connect the two – we’ve often given in to one of two temptations. Sometimes we start lying (except we usually  use the softer term denying) about current reality. We engage in what John Kotter calls “Happy Talk.” Schnase and some of the other current crop of bishops (including our own) seem to finally have gotten beyond that strategy. The second temptation has been to reduce our vision. We’ve discovered plenty of good things we can do short of making disciples of Jesus and taking up his agenda. We can rationalize just about anything if it makes us feel better about ourselves. Although Schnase may be a bit more positive than I feel sometimes, he does a fairly good job of sticking to high aims.

In future posts I will interact with each chapter of the book. You can read the book for yourself – it’s readily available – so I won’t bother to summarize it. Instead, my objective will be to lift up points I think need emphasis and to question some of his particulars.

Posted in church growth, Five Practices, Leadership, Ministry, United Methodism | 2 Comments

Following Jesus

Posted on December 20, 2007 by Richard Heyduck

One of the books I’ve read recently (on the recommendation of Steve) is The Practicing Congregation by Diana Butler Bass.  On p. 59 she says

Zygmunt Bauman, a British theorist of postmodernism, claims that “one can think of postmodern life as one lived in a ity in which traffic is daily re-rerouted and street names are liable to be changed without notice…. In such a city one is well advised not to plan long and time consuming journeys. The shorter the trip, the greater the chance of completing it.

She continues, drawing on the work of Nora Gallagher:

In an age of fragmentation, it may well be the case that the vocation of congregations is to  turn tourists into pilgrims – those who no longer journey aimlessly, but, rather, those who journey in God and whose lives are mapped by the grace of Christian practices….. The “rational” postmodern choice may be, as Bauman asserts, spiritual tourism – life without a map, without destination. But Christian congregations do not exist to provide rational choices. They exist as an alternative sort of logic that offers hospitality to strangers and wayfarers and forms people in an ancient way of being in God. As a by-product, such congregations challenge the “rationalities” of post modern life by crafting distinctively Christian ways of life. congregations provide a way of exploring moral, religious, communal, and personal identity that moves with purpose and intention through the ever-shifting terrain of the postmodern city.

I think she’s on to something here.

My first thought when reading her Bauman quote is, “We’re not so much looking for a destination as we are following Jesus.” Though sometimes the object of the Christian life is taken to be “going to heaven when you die” (certainly better than some of the alternatives: “going to hell when you die,” or just “rotting in the grave”), my reading of the New Testament is that there is more involved than a single destination.

If Christians are going to make there way (and we do have a way to make), we’ll  find ourselves crossing some difficult terrain that, as she suggests, is changing beneath or feet. The practices of which she speaks are those that are designed to help us keep our eyes on Jesus so we can follow him.

Posted in Spirituality | 1 Comment

A Rotten President

Posted on December 14, 2007 by Richard Heyduck

All the campaigning and punditry have led me to conclude that I’d make a rotten president.

First, I’d make a rotten president because I’m indecisive. I find it too easy to see multiple points of view (on the same matter) and to not come down solidly and entirely on any single position. While this is not to say I don’t come down solidly on anything – I am quite solid, stubborn and immovable on many things – America seems to want a president who can know just about everything for sure. I just don’t know enough for sure  to do the job.

Second, I’ve been minimally following the role of religion in the campaigning. With Romney a Mormon, Huckabee a Preacher, and Obama cast as a Messiah, there’s plenty of religion to go around. Americans – the pundits and elite, at least – are good Lockeans in this area. They envision a magistrate (using Lockean terms – we’d just call it government) that deals solely with material and practical things, and a church (we might call it religion) that deals with the internal and eternal. The two are not supposed to mix. The magistrate attends to the pursuit and maintenance of life, liberty, property and the common good while the church sees to it that we go to heaven when we die.

I’m not a good Lockean. I’ve found that the substance of the Christian faith has something to say about the pursuit and maintenance of life, liberty, property and the common good. Because God is the creator, and has sent Jesus the Son to bring redemption and restoration to creation, the Christian faith is very particular about some things the Lockeans would rather we just ignore.

I’d make a rotten president. Unlike JFK & Romney (and probably loads of others), I have to say that my primary allegiance is to Jesus and his kingdom. Inasmuch as a secondary allegiance to the United States of America is compatible with that primary allegiance, I’m ok with that. But if an issue develops from allegiance to the USA that conflicts with my allegiance to Jesus, then Jesus ought to prevail.

Now if I were a “not quite as rotten” candidate, I’d be able to specify in advance where the differences and conflicts between these two allegiances lay. But in comes my first disqualification for the job. I just don’t know enough. I’ve not yet been entirely convinced by any of the theorists out there regarding how these competing allegiances ought to be balanced or construed – though I do know enough to know that they do compete.

So – if you ever see my name on the ballot, you now know that you shouldn’t vote for me.

Posted in Current events, Politics | Leave a comment

Christmas and Culture

Posted on December 10, 2007 by Richard Heyduck

Over the past several years we’ve heard of numerous attempts to edge Christ out of Christmas. Some places simply shift to Santa and Snow. More recently the push has been to do away with the word altogether, settling for Winter Holidays.

While we may not be familiar with the secularization thesis from sociology, we see indications that it is at work. We even suspect that the secularization we see in our culture is not merely the inevitable consequences of urbanization, individualism and rationalism, but are the deliberate efforts of secularists – people who want to do away with God in public. (Christian Smith’s The Secular Revolution is a good place to start for more details.)

While “Happy Holidays” seems innocuous, we miss “Merry Christmas.” When we hear of retailers banning the “C-word,” we feel like we should throw it back at them. “Merry Christmas!” is what our mouths say (or growl), but sometimes our hearts are saying “Bah Humbug at your trying to dump Jesus.” If we’re going to say “Bah Humbug” about anything, it would seem that dumping Jesus would be an appropriate target.

But maybe we can look at little closer. Perhaps what we’re seeing in the retail sector is not the taking of Christ out of Christmas, but the removal of Christ from Consumerism. While the history of Christmas is rooted in Jesus – it’s his birthday, after all, the history of our celebration of Christmas is just as rooted in 19th century American culture. Retailers need to sell things – that’s how they make their living. If they’re going to sell more things, they need to create more occasions for people to buy things, even, perhaps, things they don’t actually need. I don’t know if anyone actually reasoned it out: “Jesus is all about giving. You can’t give what you don’t have. So buying is the other side of giving.” In the last couple of decades the link between Christ and Consumerism has grown to the point that “Shopping Days Until Christmas” has replaced Advent as the time of preparation. Instead of beginning with the First Sunday of Advent, this season begins with Black Friday.

Recently, however, two forces – political correctness and the expansion of “Shopping Days Until Christmas” back to Halloween or before – have served to make Christ less useful as a marketing tool. Since Jesus isn’t about marketing – about selling and acquiring stuff – maybe we can look at taking Christ out of Consumerism as a good thing.

So what about “Merry Christmas?” Ought we to say it? If your desire is to spread merriment and cheer – and even a little bit of Jesus – then wherever you think it might be received, offer it. Romans 5:8 says that “God demonstrated his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” In other words, when we were not at all inclined to find any joy in God, God was already taking joy in us and inviting us to turn to him. So try loving those Bah Humbuggers into Jesus style merriment this Christmas.

Posted in Christmas, Consumerism, Culture, Current events | 3 Comments

Golden Compass

Posted on December 5, 2007 by Richard Heyduck

Many people are asking me about the new movie The Golden Compass. I haven’t seen the movie, only read the books. The main comments have been about the fact that the author of the books is an atheist determined to show the folly of religion, and that the end result of the books has the child heroes killing god. I’ve found that while Mr. Pullman may be trying to aim at God, his aim is actually merely at god – and even that misses in the end.

Now what’s that supposed to mean?

The description of the god at which Pullman aims does not fit the God of Christianity (though it does, unfortunately, fit the god some Christians have claimed over the centuries). The god of the books is closest to the god of medieval Christianity at its worst. The only attribute of Pullman’s god is omnipotence – and that omnipotence is pretty shoddy, reduced in reality to a mere exercise of authority. The real God is omnipotent – but that omnipotence is always expressed in, through and around other characteristics, including holy love. It’s for this reason that Pullman’s picture of god and ‘Christianity’ has no place for Jesus. Jesus is not only the opposite of Pullman’s atheism but also of Pullman’s god. It’s good to remember that one of the things for which the early Christians were persecuted was atheism – they didn’t believe in the right gods. (That’s why when you converse with someone who says, “I don’t believe in god,” it’s always a good idea to figure out which god they don’t believe in. There are more gods that I don’t believe in than that I do.)

So what are we to do?
1. One possibility is to say, “It’s only a movie. Pure entertainment.” Nothing is only a movie, only entertainment. Stories and images are very powerful – why do you think the bible deals in them? They’re way more powerful than mere assertions and commands. As people called to submit our entire being to God (Romans 12:1-2), we need to refrain from the passivity the entertainment industry pushes on us and instead critically engage with what we encounter. This is true for Pullman’s work – and other works. I hope it’s even true on Sunday morning.
2. Another possibility is to just skip it. If your children are too young or immature to handle these themes, then by all means skip it. While we’re called to engage with our culture for the glory of God and the winning of people, none of us can engage with everything. Based on our situation and family configuration and needs, we chose where and how we engage. Many of us just don’t have the time and money to go see every movie out there. Some even find movies boring. So find another area to engage the culture, one more suited to your personality and family.
3. Read the books, go see the movie – but argue with them. Ask them questions. Talk with your children and the people around you. Separate the wheat from the chaff. I’d advice this not only for anti-religious movies, but also for those that purport to be Christian. Approach all things in prayer and with a sense of offering yourself to God. Seek God’s wisdom. Some people are gifted in their interaction with these aspects of culture. If you are, go for it. (You can find one interaction with Pullman here – http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/commentaries/fearnotthecompass.html).

UPDATE: Here are a couple more sources of insightful commentary: Steve Hayes and Alan Jacobs.

Posted in Culture, Current events, Golden Compass | 6 Comments

Easily Insulted?

Posted on November 28, 2007 by Richard Heyduck

Have you heard that Madalyn Murray O’Hair has petitioned the FCC to remove all Christian broadcasting from the airwaves? That rumor has been going around for over twenty years. It still comes around from time to time – even though she died several years ago.

Well, maybe it’s not her – but we all know that others are out to get us Christians. They want to ban Christmas or at least “Christmas” (the word) from our winter celebrations.

Other folks think Christians are abysmally ignorant, easily led or manipulated, adherents of a worn out, dilapidated faith.

We respond to our enemies with law suits and attempts to get people fired.

Have you noticed we’re not the only ones who think that way? Check out this story from Sudan.  I confess that I have the same thought some of the Sudanese officials had. How silly!

Being easily insulted is not a sign of strength. It’s a sign of fear and weakness, a sign of a lack of confidence. We sometimes mock the Muslims who get upset over cartoons or teddy bears. I think we need to consider our own propensity to handle insult poorly before we spend too much effort mocking others.

Posted in Clash of Civilizations, Humor, Islam | 3 Comments

When the wrong people do the right thing

Posted on November 26, 2007 by Richard Heyduck

I just finished reading Paul Johnson’s A History of Christianity. Though I read the old edition, you can find it currently in print. I’d count it as a popular supplement to more scholarly works.

In previous study I had seen that Hitler was specifically anti-Christian, but Johnson’s anecdotes and quotes show the depth of his contempt. He quotes Hitler as saying,

Do you really believe the masses will ever be Christian again? Nonsense. Never again. The tale is finished… but we can hasten matters. The parsons will be made to dig their own graves. They will betray their God to us. They will betray anything for the sake of their miserable little jobs and incomes. (p.485f)

In Johnson’s picture of German Christianity during the World War 2 years the only group that seems remotely able to stand against Hitler were the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Protestants and Catholics competed with each other to be more German than the other. Both feared that they would lose out to the other and lose their position in Germany forever. While Johnsons mentions exceptions in both segments of the state church, the overall picture was dismal.

But what about those Jehovah’s Witnesses? Most commonly we hear about their inadequate Christology and Soteriology and their wild notions about Jesus having returned already… but not exactly. From what I’ve seen their theology leaves much to be desired. But I can’t help but think that their suspicion of the State – whether of Nazi Germany or even of our own benevolent rulers – is more Christian than our meek subservience.

Posted in Books, Theology, War | 2 Comments

Back to the first millennium

Posted on November 24, 2007 by Richard Heyduck

Is it possible that legitimate Christian creativity in the area of worship ended a millennium ago?

I don’t think so.

Posted in Worship | Leave a comment