Bandits No More

The United Methodist News Service is trying to figure out the “Emerging Church” movement. In two articles they explore the nature of these churches and discover that they contain quite a bit of variety. Not a great surprise. I’ve done some stuff with Emergent & its people in the past, so I’ll share from my own perspective.

Emergent Village defines itself as a “conversation.” They avoid dogmatism – either theological or ecclesiastical. Most of the people I’ve met (Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, Chris Seay, Brad Cecil, etc.) come from an Evangelical background – think Bible Church, Reformed and Southern Baptist. To my evangelical United Methodist ears they sound like they could easily be taken as liberals by their communities of origin. Such a label would be mistaken, however. They have learned much from theologians with a postmodern tilt – Stan Grenz, Stanley Hauerwas, Miroslav Volf. From my evangelical UM perspective, it sounds like they’re finally learning from the broader Christian tradition – and thus not all that new from our point of view. But to take the movement as solely or even primarily theological would be a mistake. It’s a conversation, not an institution. They’re not seeking power over anyone. Who is accepted as a conversation partner? In my experience they’re very open. As evangelicals they didn’t look at my United Methodism and reject me as hopelessly tainted with liberalism (as others have in the past). You can check out the conversation at their blog.

If Emegent has a bias, it is toward reaching the culture that has found American Christian culture irrelevant. This is where they rub a lot of their fellow evangelicals the wrong way. For modern evangelicals, the problem with modern culture is its atheism, its active rejection of Christian truth claims. From what the Emergent folk have seen, however, the question of truth has shifted from the theoretical to the pragmatic. Instead of facing moderns who hold to only one truth – knowing Christianity isn’t it – they face a new cohort who admit to many truths and seek to create their own path through the mess. In the midst of this creativity the Emergent folk hold to Jesus as the truth – not merely as the messenger of truth (in line with some forms of modern Christianity – and Mohammed in Islam) but as truth personified. Their passion to reach this generation has led them to where they are.

I like the Emergent people. They’re fun to be around. Most of my ministry, however, is in established churches with long term Christians. Most of the young people in my small town setting are at least nominal Christians. They take traditional ways of doing church as the way to go. So I’ve had less occasion to hang out with the Emergent folk than I would like. We’ll see what happens in the future (when I become an old geezer).

Well, it’s not exactly a new ride – just new for me. The Indiana Jones ride was built years ago, and I’ve been to Disneyland at least a couple of times since they’d added it, but I’d never ridden it until our visit a week ago. Hannah (age 9) and I rode it right after we rode the Snow White ride. You’d think there would be a lot of difference between the two. Snow White is a ride for little kids; Indiana Jones is for big people. Riding them one after the other, however, I saw they were essentially the same. Oh, Indiana Jones is faster and louder, but it’s essentially the same. In both you ride a vehicle that jerks you around through images from the story. Sure the images are more like-like, and thus scarier, in Indiana Jones, but if you’re a little kid, what’s the difference?

So now that I’ve ridden it once, I don’t need to do it again. I’ll stick with the g-force rides.

Several years ago – before the crash of the dot coms, I subscribed to Fast Company. Though the magazine has gotten much thinner of late, it is still putting out interesting articles on organization and leadership – and from the church perspective, windows into our culture.

In a recent piece they look at despair.com and the new book put out by the owners. The motivation industry puffs everyone up, aiming to make peopel feel good (sound familiar church?). Here’s what the authors say:

“What executives fail to realize is that the life-changing insights sold by the motivational industry are the source of their problems rather than the solution,” Kersten writes. “The primary objective of the motivational industry is to stoke the fires of your employees’ narcissism so that they fall in love with themselves all over again, just as they did when they saw their own beauty in the distorted reflection of their mother’s adoring gaze.”

For Kersten, the heart of the problem lies in what he calls the “noble employee myth,” a product of what he dryly calls the “motivational educational-industrial” — or “ME-I” — complex. The central elements of this myth are that employees are good and productive labor is natural for them. Management is responsible for creating the circumstances that unleash employee motivation and should be blamed when employees fail. Profits should not be pursued at the expense of employee satisfaction. On it goes — the very kinds of things you’d expect to read if Jean-Jacques Rousseau happened to be unleashed in an HR department.

In our churchly effort to meet “felt needs” and make people feel good – centering the gospel on notins like “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for yourlife” – we’ve forgotten sin and the reality of its destructive power in our lives. I think a little de-motivation for us sinners might be a good thing.

We saw great natural beauty on our trip. For me, the highlight of the trip wasn’t seeing nature – or going to Disneyland. Rather, it was seeing fruit. I led the youth of Fountain Valley First United Methodist Church for four years. It was a great blessing to see so many of them still walking with Jesus. Perhaps the biggest blessing was hearing Geoff Wilson preach. Go Geoff!

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Originally uploaded by rheyduck.

While on our California trip, we stayed with some friends in Tiburon. We’d gotten the idea the community was an expensive place to live (real estate prices average well over a million – and this is for small houses on small lots). We learned, however, that Tiburon was originally for the families of laborers, while Belvedere was where the wealthy had their homes. As far as I could tell, except for the lower income set aside apartments, no one in my social class or below live here any more (I was told the longshoreman who live in the area make $120k a year). Our friends told us that the two questions asked when you meet someone are:
1. Where do you live?
2. Do you have a view?

They take views mighty seriously. (Here’s a link to their View Ordinance as it relates to trees.) Our friends told us that views are so important that you have to get your neighbor’s permission to do anything to your house – including changing from single pane to double pane windows. I asked if the views were valued primarily for the sake of the view or for that American god “property value.” Take your guess what the answer was.

Tiburon was a very nice place to visit, but I don’t think I’d fit in as a resident.

Donald Sensing comments on the recent Supreme Court Kelo ruling on government seizure of private property for the benefit of others. I haven’t read the ruling, but from what little I’ve heard it sounds horrible.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to further discussion at Christianity Today.

Blogging has been slow because of my vacation to California. Just ran through a theological test though. Here are my results. Nothing shocking.

The irony overwhelms me. “Scientists” or “experts” or whoever comes up with these things have an astounding new discovery. Behavioral therapy can significantly reduce the need for medication for ADHD

Haven’t parents known for years that behavioral therapy has great affects on the behavior of kids?

For too many years we have been rolling headlong toward popping pills for just about everything. Perhaps this will herald a new day in medicine… a day when we don’t reach for the pill bottle first thing every morning and last thing at night.

We had a guest preacher lead our morning Bible Studies at Annual Conference this year. While she did a good job, I couldn’t help but think that she was increasing her visibility toward a run at the the episcopacy in 08.

But how does one get such gigs? Does one approach one’s bishop and say, “Bishop, I would like a shot at the episcopacy at the next Jurisdictional Conference, could you contact some of your bishop friends and get them to invite me to lead a bible study at other annual conferences in our jurisdiction?”

“Here we are, entertain us,” wrote Kurt Cobain, claiming to identify the shallowness being bred into the young among us as our media culture thrived in the early 1990s.

This is being written in Hamburg, Arkansas. I am one of approximately 2400 senior high youth and adults who have traveled from central Texas to Arkansas this week for the Central Texas Conference Youth in Mission trip (CTCYM). In July we will have some 700 junior high youth and adults doing very similar things within central Texas.

I’ve got good news. We are spending our nights on the floors of churches and community centers around the state and our days helping people. We are building wheelchair ramps, replacing floors, painting houses, and much more. We are touching lives.

We are doing these things because we serve a God who loved us enough to come to us. One of the ways we thank God for finding us and loving us and inviting us into a relationship with Him is to spread the word; To share the love.

There is more than enough bad news these days, and more than a fair share of it is about “the youth of today.” According to some, young people are growing more detached from society all the time. Many people my age and older are too busy looking down our noses at youth and their music and hair and clothing styles we don’t give them a chance.

If you have any concern about “today’s youth,” this week should give you encouragement. Not only did all these young people pay to get to go and do sweaty work for a week, they are willing waking up at 6:30 each morning and eagerly getting back out to the worksites.

The theory on mission trips in youth ministry used to be that the kids would do a half day of work if they were offered an exciting diversion or entertainment in the afternoon. I am happy to tell you that theory is outdated; since CTCYM was founded in 1994, youth have been working hard from 8 to 4 to bring hope and comfort to people they have never met before.

We hear two critical reactions to these trips. First, some tell us that charity starts at home and that we ought not have to travel to do mission work. The first of these trips I took the youth of one church on so inspired a couple of them that when they got home that summer they planned a similar time of service in their own community. The truth is these mission trips and others like them change those who go, making them better neighbors at home.

The other criticism is that many of the people we are offered help don’t deserve it. Some of them have made poor choices that have brought them to the place they are now. In support of this point, many of our clients are able, or have family who are able, to be doing the things we are doing, but doing them for themselves.

I am fraid people who offer this criticism have missed the whole point of the Gospel. Every since the first sin we have been trying to take care of our own problems and pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Knowing that we couldn’t do it on our own, Jesus came to bridge the gap between God and humanity that we could not bridge on our own.

This is precisely what makes the Gospel good news; that God loved us all enough to invite us back, not because we could or should do it anything ourselves, but simply because He loves us.

We help others, whether or not they deserve it because we serve a God who stepped in to help us even though we could not deserve it.

Go thou and do likewise.