NY Times editor equates Christian faith with belief in space aliens
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
All you pastors, that fancy 2nd vacation home? Tax free, baby!
The IRS tax court says so here.
Tax Break for Clergy Questioned
As Congress scrutinizes every nook and cranny of the budget for possible revenue, a surprising court decision is allowing clergy members to buy or live in multiple homes tax-free.
The U.S. Tax Court ruled that Phil Driscoll, an ordained minister and Grammy Award-winning trumpeter who went to prison for tax evasion, didn't owe federal income taxes on $408,638 provided to him by his ministry to buy a second home on a lake near Cleveland, Tenn.
Under a provision of the tax code known as the parsonage allowance, first passed in 1921, an ordained clergy member may live tax-free in a home owned by his or her religious organization or receive a tax-free annual payment to buy or rent a home if the congregation approves.
The Tax Court ruling, made final in March, extends the parsonage allowance to an unlimited number of homes, which may be owned either by the religious organization or the clergy member.
In a 7-6 ruling, a panel of Tax Court judges sided with Mr. Driscoll's argument that the word "home" is equivalent to "homes," just as "child" is interpreted to mean "children" elsewhere in the tax code.
The Internal Revenue Service declined to comment on the decision. In May, the agency appealed it to a federal appeals court in Atlanta.
Experts say the parsonage allowance was originally included as a way to minimize taxes on clergy members, whose compensation was often meager. It still is widely used for that purpose, church officials said, although the IRS doesn't track usage of the benefit.
"For most of them the housing allowance is modest because their compensation is modest," says Daniel Gary, an attorney with the United Methodist Church in Nashville.
Similarly, D. August Boto, general counsel of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, says for leaders of the organization's 46,000 churches "the housing allowance is critically important for making ends meet—it is not a luxury."
Read the rest here.
Sister and Me: Beautiful handbags and purses
Wait, my blog has been been hijacked by some weird Chinese bot!
No, I am referring to a thriving little business in small town North Carolina, making handmade bags and purses one at a time. Each one is unique, never repeated. They are beautiful, made from vintage recycled, upholstery fabric.
Ladies, get yours. Men get one for the lady in your life.
Why the advertisement in my humble little blog? Well, I know the owner of this shop .... :)
Check Out the Sister and Me shop here.
Facebook page is here.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
80's video game characters sing about drinking beer at Octoberfest
Strangely, ... no, bizzarely entertaining.
The Beatles are toast
Or rather the toast is the Beatles. Portraits of the Beatles. Done all in burnt toast. Its art, folks. Click here for all four portraits. I'll just post the coolest Beatle who wrote the best songs: John.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Can creedless Unitarians make it another 50 years?
Can creedless Unitarians make it another 50 years? From RNS.
A recent Sunday service at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore ended with an apology. Laurel Mendes explained that religious doctrine had been duly scrubbed from the hymns in the congregation's Sunday program. But Mendes, a neopagan lay member who led the service, feared that a reference to God in "Once to Every Soul and Nation" might upset the humanists in the pews.
"I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable by reciting something that might be considered a profession of faith," said Mendes, 52, after the service. "We did say 'God,' which you don't often hear in our most politically correct hymns."
Such remarks are typical in the anything-but-typical Unitarian Universalist Association, a liberal religious movement with a proud history of welcoming all seekers of truth—as long as it's spelled with a lowercase t. For 50 years the Boston-based UUA has conducted a virtually unprecedented experiment: advancing a religion without doctrine, hoping that welcoming communities and shared political causes, not creeds, will draw people to their pews.
Leaders say its no-religious-questions-asked style positions the UUA to capitalize on liberalizing trends in American religion. But as the UUA turns 50 this year, some members argue that a midlife identity crisis is hampering outreach and hindering growth. In trying to be all things to everyone, they say, the association risks becoming nothing to anybody.
The UUA does promote seven largely secular principles that emphasize human dignity and justice. Membership in the UUA dipped in 2011 for the third consecutive year to 162,800, a loss of about 1,400 members. The number of congregations fell by two to 1,046.
The UUA was formed in 1961 by the merger of two small historic groups: Unitarians, who believe in one God, rather than Christianity's traditional Trinity; and Universalists, who hold that God's salvation extends to all, regardless of race, creed or religion.
Nearly 4,000 Unitarian Universalists gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina, June 22–26 for the association's annual assembly, where they celebrated their golden anniversary with hymns, remembrances and a large cake.
As usual, progressive politics prevailed, with pledges for an "institutional commitment" to ethical eating, an antidiscrimination rally and a special collection taken for ministry to immigrants. Such activism dates to 19th-century Unitarian godfather William Ellery Channing, who argued that the aim of religious life is to encourage public virtue.
"That sense that religion must be practical and influence the moral and spiritual context in which we live remains absolutely central to Unitarian Universalism today," said John Buehrens, a former president of the UUA.
Like the UUA, one in four Americans sample from a variety of faith traditions, according to a 2009 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. A separate Pew survey found that 65 percent believe that multiple religious paths can lead to eternal life.
"There has certainly been an increase in the amount of people who are open to the kind of ideas the Unitarian Universalists have championed," said John C. Green, a political scientist who worked on the Pew studies and has studied the UUA. "Whether they can convert that into members joining them is an open question. But the opportunity is certainly there."
Peter Morales, the UUA's current president, calls those trends, as well as the exodus of Americans from most Christian denominations, "an amazing opportunity."
"Millions of people are actively seeking a progressive, nondogmatic spiritual community," he said. "Our challenge is to be the religious community that embraces those people."
But some say the UUA is held back by members' reluctance to proclaim religious tenets—a tricky task for an association that includes Christians, Buddhists, Jews, pagans, humanists and spiritual refugees from a host of more dogmatic faiths. Many UUA members say they find meaning and purpose in the familial bonds forged in congregations—regardless of religious beliefs.
David Bumbaugh, a professor of ministry at the UUA's Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago, was present at the founding of the association in 1961. He says the UUA has always shied away from God-talk for fear of offending members and shattering congregations.
But Bumbaugh has made the rounds recently at regional UUA conferences, encouraging them to publicly wrestle with foundational questions. "What do we believe? Whom do we serve? To whom or what are we responsible? Those are the questions with which every viable religious movement must wrestle," Bumbaugh has said. "So long as those essential questions remain unaddressed, the dream will remain unfulfilled."
An internal UUA report from 2005 suggested that more than dreams could die. The whole association could collapse if members continue to muffle religious discussion, the report said. "The consensus of experts from an array of fields—from organizational development to systematic theology—is that to grow effectively, a religious organization needs clearly defined boundaries," the report states. "And one cannot put even the most permeable boundary around nothing."
A recent Sunday service at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore ended with an apology. Laurel Mendes explained that religious doctrine had been duly scrubbed from the hymns in the congregation's Sunday program. But Mendes, a neopagan lay member who led the service, feared that a reference to God in "Once to Every Soul and Nation" might upset the humanists in the pews.
"I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable by reciting something that might be considered a profession of faith," said Mendes, 52, after the service. "We did say 'God,' which you don't often hear in our most politically correct hymns."
Such remarks are typical in the anything-but-typical Unitarian Universalist Association, a liberal religious movement with a proud history of welcoming all seekers of truth—as long as it's spelled with a lowercase t. For 50 years the Boston-based UUA has conducted a virtually unprecedented experiment: advancing a religion without doctrine, hoping that welcoming communities and shared political causes, not creeds, will draw people to their pews.
Leaders say its no-religious-questions-asked style positions the UUA to capitalize on liberalizing trends in American religion. But as the UUA turns 50 this year, some members argue that a midlife identity crisis is hampering outreach and hindering growth. In trying to be all things to everyone, they say, the association risks becoming nothing to anybody.
The UUA does promote seven largely secular principles that emphasize human dignity and justice. Membership in the UUA dipped in 2011 for the third consecutive year to 162,800, a loss of about 1,400 members. The number of congregations fell by two to 1,046.
The UUA was formed in 1961 by the merger of two small historic groups: Unitarians, who believe in one God, rather than Christianity's traditional Trinity; and Universalists, who hold that God's salvation extends to all, regardless of race, creed or religion.
Nearly 4,000 Unitarian Universalists gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina, June 22–26 for the association's annual assembly, where they celebrated their golden anniversary with hymns, remembrances and a large cake.
As usual, progressive politics prevailed, with pledges for an "institutional commitment" to ethical eating, an antidiscrimination rally and a special collection taken for ministry to immigrants. Such activism dates to 19th-century Unitarian godfather William Ellery Channing, who argued that the aim of religious life is to encourage public virtue.
"That sense that religion must be practical and influence the moral and spiritual context in which we live remains absolutely central to Unitarian Universalism today," said John Buehrens, a former president of the UUA.
Like the UUA, one in four Americans sample from a variety of faith traditions, according to a 2009 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. A separate Pew survey found that 65 percent believe that multiple religious paths can lead to eternal life.
"There has certainly been an increase in the amount of people who are open to the kind of ideas the Unitarian Universalists have championed," said John C. Green, a political scientist who worked on the Pew studies and has studied the UUA. "Whether they can convert that into members joining them is an open question. But the opportunity is certainly there."
Peter Morales, the UUA's current president, calls those trends, as well as the exodus of Americans from most Christian denominations, "an amazing opportunity."
"Millions of people are actively seeking a progressive, nondogmatic spiritual community," he said. "Our challenge is to be the religious community that embraces those people."
But some say the UUA is held back by members' reluctance to proclaim religious tenets—a tricky task for an association that includes Christians, Buddhists, Jews, pagans, humanists and spiritual refugees from a host of more dogmatic faiths. Many UUA members say they find meaning and purpose in the familial bonds forged in congregations—regardless of religious beliefs.
David Bumbaugh, a professor of ministry at the UUA's Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago, was present at the founding of the association in 1961. He says the UUA has always shied away from God-talk for fear of offending members and shattering congregations.
But Bumbaugh has made the rounds recently at regional UUA conferences, encouraging them to publicly wrestle with foundational questions. "What do we believe? Whom do we serve? To whom or what are we responsible? Those are the questions with which every viable religious movement must wrestle," Bumbaugh has said. "So long as those essential questions remain unaddressed, the dream will remain unfulfilled."
An internal UUA report from 2005 suggested that more than dreams could die. The whole association could collapse if members continue to muffle religious discussion, the report said. "The consensus of experts from an array of fields—from organizational development to systematic theology—is that to grow effectively, a religious organization needs clearly defined boundaries," the report states. "And one cannot put even the most permeable boundary around nothing."
Friday, August 26, 2011
Theology of Worship
Here is a review I wrote some years ago of a great little book now out of print by Friederich Kalb: Theology of Worship in 17th-Century Lutheranism, translated by Henry P. Hamann. St. Louis: Concordia, 1965. The review was published in Logia.
The marriage of doctrine and worship is the fruitful union from which a healthy Lutheran church body takes its birth. The Lutherans Confessions supply that doctrine; they serve as the critical pattern of truth drawn from and filled with Scriptural, Christological, Gospel content. But the Confessions in isolation become mere historical documents. They need liturgy, the church at worship, in order to truly live in a church body.
The Confessions are not static documents but a living guide to Christ, marking the boundaries of truth where Christ and his salvation are found. Worship is that pasture whose fences are the Confessions. In the Divine Service the faithful feed on God’s Truth Incarnate for salvation; the God of grace and mercy works righteousness in dead sinners and his people acclaim him. What the Confessions guarantee, the service delivers: God and his salvation.
That these two, worship and doctrine, go together is not always obvious in the life of the what claims to be confessional Lutheranism in America. Aberrations of church growth methodologies and claustrophobic conservatism centered on repristinating bygone eras both cut the natural bond between the Confessions and the Divine service. In the former, content and confession are unloosed so that worship gallops free from specific beliefs to entertain the masses while in the latter doctrine serves mainly to preserve the form and patterns of the cherished past. In both confessional Lutheranism is still-born, the product of an unhappy, uneven marriage.
What is needed is a viewpoint that connects worship and doctrine, liturgy and the Confessions. It is precisely that outlook which is supplied in this masterful little book by Friederich Kalb. The book offers a glimpse into a theological way of thinking sorely needed in this day when a comprehensive theology which integrates all aspects of authentic Lutheran theology in a living way is hard to find. The strength of Kalb’s book is the peek it offers into an attempt (not perfect) at a holistic theological system where doctrine and worship are integrated into a complete vision of Lutheran church life. There are scores of lessons to be learned from seeing the relation of worship and doctrine in the mind of the Orthodox Lutheran fathers. Three can be noted for now.
The first lesson comes from learning the context in which the Orthodox Lutheran systematicians wrote. The seventeenth century was a century of Orthodoxy but also of incipient pietism within Lutheranism and, on the outside, Reformed enemies of Lutheran doctrine and a robust Romanism. Kalb’s presentation of the atmosphere in which the orthodox doctrine of worship was formulated helps to dispel a persistent notion in our day: that our situation is so unique and new that it calls for new and daring changes in worship. In fact what Kalb reminds us is that the church has always had to formulate and practice her worship in the midst of the constant urge from within and without to nudge Christ and his gifts to the side and put man and his work in the center. Whether the Roman sacrifice of the Mass, the creeping fog of mysticism or the glowing heart of the pietist, the individualistic, anthropocentric impulse is never far from the church at worship.
A second lesson to be gleaned is the relation of worship to the whole of the theological enterprise and the Christian life. Kalb makes clear that the orthodox fathers managed to connect the whole of Christian doctrine and life to worship. The orthodox doctrine of worship was comprehensive; for these Lutherans worship was not one section of dogmatics but was the whole subject of dogmatics and ethics. “Worship” was shorthand for the relation of God and man; it is the meeting of God and man in Christ. As such it stands at the center of all ecclesiastical action. When God deals with us it necessarily involves worship. A deep desire for true doctrine in the orthodox fathers led them not away from worship as mere adiaphoron or to a dead formalism but precisely to the realization that worship pervades all Christian experience and thought. Lutheranism in the 20th century has found it difficult to maintain both an integral liturgical worship while at the same time maintaining a deep and live attachment to true doctrine. These systematicians show us that this need not be the case.
This realization of the pervasiveness of worship in the Christian life led the dogmaticians to consider not only the essence and theological underpinnings of worship but the concrete aspects of worship in the congregation. The perennial problem that must be faced in dealing with Lutheran worship is adiaphora. If the service is adiaphora, what saves it from complete irrelevance? If salvation is not to be found in the human aspects of the liturgy why must there be a liturgy or organized forms of worship at all? Adiaphora, the escape hatch of current contemporary worship faddists, is carefully considered by the domgaticians.
Kalb brings to the surface in the Orthodox Lutheran dogmaticians what might be termed the paradox of adiaphora. While they are free and not commanded or essential for salvation, worship cannot happen apart from human ceremonies not commanded in Scripture. No Christian service can exist without adiaphora since what is commanded by Christ in regards to baptism, preaching and Lord’s Supper cannot be carried out without adiaphoristic ceremony. The Verba and Distribution and Trinitarian baptism must somehow happen within a service in a congregation. Adiaphora are, on the one hand, not essential yet on the other they are. This tension lies at the heart of all practical Lutheran theology of worship.
The dogmaticians do not dissipate this tension but harness it in service of the Gospel. Adiaphora are never rites that must be carried out to give salvation yet they are related to the Gospel as to their ultimate source and reason for being . The category “adiaphora” is not a junk drawer into which all extra-sacramental actions are thrown so that they may be used in a pinch or ignored at will. They exist as servant to the Gospel: to assist, arrange and beautify. The Gospel sacraments and the adiaphora of the liturgy go together and must always be together. Ceremonies are the structures and means by which the Gospel and sacraments take shape within the liturgy. Never empty or neutral, humanly devised rites and ceremonies are always organically related and united to the concrete sacramental Gospel of the Lutheran liturgy.
The theology of the 17th century Lutheran fathers was not perfect nor will it serve as an instant solution to the worship woes engulfing Lutheranism today. Their shortcomings (a drift toward legalism, a dry scholastic form of expression among others) are apparent. However, an integrated theological vision which encompasses both doctrine and liturgy in a harmonious whole is a helpful challenge to us and our age which thrives on fragmentation and atomization. A deep look back into one generation's unifying expression of the relation of doctrine and liturgy will assist us to not put asunder what God has joined together.
The marriage of doctrine and worship is the fruitful union from which a healthy Lutheran church body takes its birth. The Lutherans Confessions supply that doctrine; they serve as the critical pattern of truth drawn from and filled with Scriptural, Christological, Gospel content. But the Confessions in isolation become mere historical documents. They need liturgy, the church at worship, in order to truly live in a church body.
The Confessions are not static documents but a living guide to Christ, marking the boundaries of truth where Christ and his salvation are found. Worship is that pasture whose fences are the Confessions. In the Divine Service the faithful feed on God’s Truth Incarnate for salvation; the God of grace and mercy works righteousness in dead sinners and his people acclaim him. What the Confessions guarantee, the service delivers: God and his salvation.
That these two, worship and doctrine, go together is not always obvious in the life of the what claims to be confessional Lutheranism in America. Aberrations of church growth methodologies and claustrophobic conservatism centered on repristinating bygone eras both cut the natural bond between the Confessions and the Divine service. In the former, content and confession are unloosed so that worship gallops free from specific beliefs to entertain the masses while in the latter doctrine serves mainly to preserve the form and patterns of the cherished past. In both confessional Lutheranism is still-born, the product of an unhappy, uneven marriage.
What is needed is a viewpoint that connects worship and doctrine, liturgy and the Confessions. It is precisely that outlook which is supplied in this masterful little book by Friederich Kalb. The book offers a glimpse into a theological way of thinking sorely needed in this day when a comprehensive theology which integrates all aspects of authentic Lutheran theology in a living way is hard to find. The strength of Kalb’s book is the peek it offers into an attempt (not perfect) at a holistic theological system where doctrine and worship are integrated into a complete vision of Lutheran church life. There are scores of lessons to be learned from seeing the relation of worship and doctrine in the mind of the Orthodox Lutheran fathers. Three can be noted for now.
The first lesson comes from learning the context in which the Orthodox Lutheran systematicians wrote. The seventeenth century was a century of Orthodoxy but also of incipient pietism within Lutheranism and, on the outside, Reformed enemies of Lutheran doctrine and a robust Romanism. Kalb’s presentation of the atmosphere in which the orthodox doctrine of worship was formulated helps to dispel a persistent notion in our day: that our situation is so unique and new that it calls for new and daring changes in worship. In fact what Kalb reminds us is that the church has always had to formulate and practice her worship in the midst of the constant urge from within and without to nudge Christ and his gifts to the side and put man and his work in the center. Whether the Roman sacrifice of the Mass, the creeping fog of mysticism or the glowing heart of the pietist, the individualistic, anthropocentric impulse is never far from the church at worship.
A second lesson to be gleaned is the relation of worship to the whole of the theological enterprise and the Christian life. Kalb makes clear that the orthodox fathers managed to connect the whole of Christian doctrine and life to worship. The orthodox doctrine of worship was comprehensive; for these Lutherans worship was not one section of dogmatics but was the whole subject of dogmatics and ethics. “Worship” was shorthand for the relation of God and man; it is the meeting of God and man in Christ. As such it stands at the center of all ecclesiastical action. When God deals with us it necessarily involves worship. A deep desire for true doctrine in the orthodox fathers led them not away from worship as mere adiaphoron or to a dead formalism but precisely to the realization that worship pervades all Christian experience and thought. Lutheranism in the 20th century has found it difficult to maintain both an integral liturgical worship while at the same time maintaining a deep and live attachment to true doctrine. These systematicians show us that this need not be the case.
This realization of the pervasiveness of worship in the Christian life led the dogmaticians to consider not only the essence and theological underpinnings of worship but the concrete aspects of worship in the congregation. The perennial problem that must be faced in dealing with Lutheran worship is adiaphora. If the service is adiaphora, what saves it from complete irrelevance? If salvation is not to be found in the human aspects of the liturgy why must there be a liturgy or organized forms of worship at all? Adiaphora, the escape hatch of current contemporary worship faddists, is carefully considered by the domgaticians.
Kalb brings to the surface in the Orthodox Lutheran dogmaticians what might be termed the paradox of adiaphora. While they are free and not commanded or essential for salvation, worship cannot happen apart from human ceremonies not commanded in Scripture. No Christian service can exist without adiaphora since what is commanded by Christ in regards to baptism, preaching and Lord’s Supper cannot be carried out without adiaphoristic ceremony. The Verba and Distribution and Trinitarian baptism must somehow happen within a service in a congregation. Adiaphora are, on the one hand, not essential yet on the other they are. This tension lies at the heart of all practical Lutheran theology of worship.
The dogmaticians do not dissipate this tension but harness it in service of the Gospel. Adiaphora are never rites that must be carried out to give salvation yet they are related to the Gospel as to their ultimate source and reason for being . The category “adiaphora” is not a junk drawer into which all extra-sacramental actions are thrown so that they may be used in a pinch or ignored at will. They exist as servant to the Gospel: to assist, arrange and beautify. The Gospel sacraments and the adiaphora of the liturgy go together and must always be together. Ceremonies are the structures and means by which the Gospel and sacraments take shape within the liturgy. Never empty or neutral, humanly devised rites and ceremonies are always organically related and united to the concrete sacramental Gospel of the Lutheran liturgy.
The theology of the 17th century Lutheran fathers was not perfect nor will it serve as an instant solution to the worship woes engulfing Lutheranism today. Their shortcomings (a drift toward legalism, a dry scholastic form of expression among others) are apparent. However, an integrated theological vision which encompasses both doctrine and liturgy in a harmonious whole is a helpful challenge to us and our age which thrives on fragmentation and atomization. A deep look back into one generation's unifying expression of the relation of doctrine and liturgy will assist us to not put asunder what God has joined together.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Sounds like its all about "corporate bigness" to me
Is there anything in this article that couldn't also be said about some corporate merger?
—a 14 percent increase over pre-merger days
-"The new merger math is one and one equals ten," he said. "There's a synergy about it."
-The merged operation offers increased credibility, a broader identity, and financial efficiency.
Language means something. It is kind of scary how complete the business/corporate takeover of the mindset is in some quarters of American Christianity.
Missional Church Mergers
New report: More congregational combinations driven by mission, not survival.
East Valley Bible Church was already a megachurch. Praxis Church was headed in the same direction. But last year, pastors Tyler Johnson and Justin Anderson agreed to merge their thriving congregations in order to better reach the Phoenix area.
Today attendance at four campuses of Redemption Church—which accepted a third partner in January—is nearly 4,800, a 14 percent increase over pre-merger days for all three churches combined.
"This was born out of the idea of having a city church, like the church at Ephesus or the church at Philippi," said Anderson, Redemption's lead pastor. "We asked, 'What would be the advantage of 100 churches in Phoenix partnering together for church planting, sharing staff … and [providing] lay training?' "
A new report from Leadership Network verifies that such mission-driven church mergers are a growing trend. Two percent of churches have merged in the last two years and five percent are likely to by 2013.
Jim Tomberlin and Warren Bird, who surveyed more than 400 churches earlier this year, say mergers have been on the rise in the U.S. and Canada for 20 years. Mergers have combined churches of different sizes, denominations, and ethnicities. Last October, an African American congregation in Missouri merged with a fading white church, preserving the latter's name.
Traditional survival-based mergers by dwindling churches often see the combined congregation ultimately shrink again. But the mission-driven model spurs additional growth, said Tomberlin, a multi-site consultant from Scottsdale, Arizona.
"The new merger math is one and one equals ten," he said. "There's a synergy about it."
Multi-site churches are a key part of this movement, with one in three originating from a merger. However, Bird says the new trend has more significance and the potential to affect far more churches.
"The multi-side model is a tool for the 20 percent of healthy, growing churches in America," said Bird, research director at Leadership Network. "The merger model is a tool for them and the remaining 80 percent of stuck or declining churches."
The October 2010 merger of Washington Heights Church in Ogden, Utah, and suburban Salt Lake City's Bountiful Baptist has proved beneficial to both, said lead pastor Roy Gruber. Not only has Washington Heights' attendance jumped more than 10 percent, attendance at Bountiful had nearly quadrupled by mid-summer.
"[Bountiful] had a heart for their community since the 1960s but were struggling," said Gruber. "There's an opportunity to reach more people through this."
Growth isn't a given. Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas remains at 600 worshipers three years after merging with a Hispanic church. However, it has since started a campus in nearby Conway. Last February, it also brought a struggling church from Durham, North Carolina, into the fold.
Directional leader Mark DeYmaz said the merged operation offers increased credibility, a broader identity, and financial efficiency.
"It's giving more people a chance to see our vision," DeYmaz said. "We're interested in helping churches and in expanding the multiethnic church movement."
Mergers can present challenges. Although Eagle Brook Church has seen considerable growth since its December 2007 merger with a fading church in suburban Minneapolis, discussions with two dozen other potential partners fizzled.
"Merger—when it works—is a great option," said executive pastor Scott Anderson. "But I do think people are a little naïve about what's involved. It's easier to raise money [for a new church] than to blend two cultures. It's a challenge."
—a 14 percent increase over pre-merger days
-"The new merger math is one and one equals ten," he said. "There's a synergy about it."
-The merged operation offers increased credibility, a broader identity, and financial efficiency.
Language means something. It is kind of scary how complete the business/corporate takeover of the mindset is in some quarters of American Christianity.
Missional Church Mergers
New report: More congregational combinations driven by mission, not survival.
East Valley Bible Church was already a megachurch. Praxis Church was headed in the same direction. But last year, pastors Tyler Johnson and Justin Anderson agreed to merge their thriving congregations in order to better reach the Phoenix area.
Today attendance at four campuses of Redemption Church—which accepted a third partner in January—is nearly 4,800, a 14 percent increase over pre-merger days for all three churches combined.
"This was born out of the idea of having a city church, like the church at Ephesus or the church at Philippi," said Anderson, Redemption's lead pastor. "We asked, 'What would be the advantage of 100 churches in Phoenix partnering together for church planting, sharing staff … and [providing] lay training?' "
A new report from Leadership Network verifies that such mission-driven church mergers are a growing trend. Two percent of churches have merged in the last two years and five percent are likely to by 2013.
Jim Tomberlin and Warren Bird, who surveyed more than 400 churches earlier this year, say mergers have been on the rise in the U.S. and Canada for 20 years. Mergers have combined churches of different sizes, denominations, and ethnicities. Last October, an African American congregation in Missouri merged with a fading white church, preserving the latter's name.
Traditional survival-based mergers by dwindling churches often see the combined congregation ultimately shrink again. But the mission-driven model spurs additional growth, said Tomberlin, a multi-site consultant from Scottsdale, Arizona.
"The new merger math is one and one equals ten," he said. "There's a synergy about it."
Multi-site churches are a key part of this movement, with one in three originating from a merger. However, Bird says the new trend has more significance and the potential to affect far more churches.
"The multi-side model is a tool for the 20 percent of healthy, growing churches in America," said Bird, research director at Leadership Network. "The merger model is a tool for them and the remaining 80 percent of stuck or declining churches."
The October 2010 merger of Washington Heights Church in Ogden, Utah, and suburban Salt Lake City's Bountiful Baptist has proved beneficial to both, said lead pastor Roy Gruber. Not only has Washington Heights' attendance jumped more than 10 percent, attendance at Bountiful had nearly quadrupled by mid-summer.
"[Bountiful] had a heart for their community since the 1960s but were struggling," said Gruber. "There's an opportunity to reach more people through this."
Growth isn't a given. Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas remains at 600 worshipers three years after merging with a Hispanic church. However, it has since started a campus in nearby Conway. Last February, it also brought a struggling church from Durham, North Carolina, into the fold.
Directional leader Mark DeYmaz said the merged operation offers increased credibility, a broader identity, and financial efficiency.
"It's giving more people a chance to see our vision," DeYmaz said. "We're interested in helping churches and in expanding the multiethnic church movement."
Mergers can present challenges. Although Eagle Brook Church has seen considerable growth since its December 2007 merger with a fading church in suburban Minneapolis, discussions with two dozen other potential partners fizzled.
"Merger—when it works—is a great option," said executive pastor Scott Anderson. "But I do think people are a little naïve about what's involved. It's easier to raise money [for a new church] than to blend two cultures. It's a challenge."
How the early church fathers read the Bible
“They correctly understood that the key to good interpretation is discerning the whole message of Scripture well, and they correctly saw that the Bible as a whole is fundamentally about Christ.”
For that reason, following their example is safer than following modern methods: “it is less dangerous to discern the Bible’s central message clearly but read that message too enthusiastically into all passages than it is to read each passage individually without an adequate grasp of the central message.”
HT: Peter Leithart
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Some songs about the fruit of the vine ...
... for no particular reason.
Down in New Orleans, where everything's fine/All them cats is drinkin' that wine
...Gallo or Muscatel, either one would be just swell ...
... He gave her poison in a glass of wine...
Down in New Orleans, where everything's fine/All them cats is drinkin' that wine
...Gallo or Muscatel, either one would be just swell ...
... He gave her poison in a glass of wine...
Thursday, August 18, 2011
The Siberian Evangelical Lutheran Church
From time to time I see blog posts and facebook updates about the Siberian Lutheran Church. Pastor Larry Beane recently traveled over to Siberia for the summer seminars and you can read about his adventures and see pictures on his blog here.
These dispatches always reminds me of my time over there. I have gone twice : once for the Summer Seminars in 2002 and again to teach at the seminary in 2004. I am always ready to return! Please support the churches through the Siberian Lutheran Mission Society. My church, Redeemer in Catawba, NC has the society in our budget. Maybe yours can too.
I remembered a little web interview Pastor Alexei Streltsov posted on the seminary website. It has some pictures of me "in action". You can see the post and read it here. It is is written in Russian but my browser automatically offers a translation. Anyway here is the rather rough Google translation of the post and the pictures ( which are just lectures):
In the Lutheran Theological Seminary - a new professor. From November 15 to December 2, Professor of. Paul Gregory Alms reads to students in their freshman year lectures on the Book of Concord. LBS is considered to be confessional Lutheran seminary in the world. Study of Lutheran confessional book is one of the most important places in the curriculum of the seminary. Previously, students were LBS basic course on the Book of Concord, and then they offered a special course in addition to selected topics of religious books. But now the program has become more extensive. Total students are offered three courses on the Book of Concord, and two of them - already during the first year. It was decided to double the number of hours devoted to study the Book of Concord in the main program, so that now the seminary offers not one but two of the course. Book of Concord was divided into two parts. In the first year, which now spends about. Alms, students study the Universe of Faith, the Augsburg Confession and Apology. In the second year of study other documents included in the Book of Concord.
Although the. Gregory Alms teaches at the Lutheran Theological Seminary for the first time, he was in Siberia in 2002 with the aim of teaching the course "The Christology of the ancient church" in the summer of theological seminars in Yekaterinburg, Tomsk, Irkutsk and Abakan. Prof. Sam Alms appreciates the current trip. "In Siberia, I for the second time, I like it here, and yet it was very cold. I like to go out and learn how life works here. " On the first-year students about. Alms speaks of as "very energetic and willing to learn" people. "They came from different places, and nice to see that they all tend to learn the Word of God and the true teaching of the Lutheran Church. Besides lectures, we often go through a lively discussion. I see in students a deep interest in theology, which they learn, "says Professor Alms.
Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison
Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison ... Pete and Toshi Seeger, their son Daniel, and folklorist Bruce Jackson visited a Texas prison in Huntsville in March of 1966 and produced this rare document of of work songs by inmates of the Ellis Unit.
Watch it here.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
"Then here came Elvis with a hot, stomping, steaming, sexy kind of music ...
... that turned on young people as pop music never had before."
My friend Rastaman Vibrations posted a great news cast from the day Elvis died. Here it is
My friend Rastaman Vibrations posted a great news cast from the day Elvis died. Here it is
Monday, August 15, 2011
"The gospel became just another product someone was trying to sell me"
This is a great essay on growing up in the CCM youth culture of the 90's.The author traces the shift in Christian music from being explicitly Christian to being more and more marketing driven and thus less and less outwardly marked by any discernible Christian message. A great read.
Her are some of her conclusions:
This trend spreads beyond CCM into many areas of evangelical culture. The church is becoming increasingly consumer-friendly. Jacob Hill, director of “worship arts” at New Walk Church, describes the Sunday service music as “exciting, loud, powerful, and relevant,” and boasts that “a lot of people say they feel like they’ve just been at a rock concert.” Over the past ten years, I’ve visited churches that have Starbucks kiosks in the foyer and youth wings decked out with air hockey tables. I’ve witnessed a preacher stop his sermon to play a five-minute clip from Billy Madison. I’ve walked into a sanctuary that was blasting the Black Eyed Peas’s “Let’s Get it Started” to get the congregation pumped for the morning’s message, which was on joy. I have heard a pastor say, from a pulpit, “Hey, I’m not here to preach at anyone.” And yet, in spite of these efforts, churches are retaining only 4 percent of the young people raised in their congregations.
Despite all the affected teenage rebellion, I continued to call myself a Christian into my early twenties. When I finally stopped, it wasn’t because being a believer made me uncool or outdated or freakish. It was because being a Christian no longer meant anything. It was a label to slap on my Facebook page, next to my music preferences. The gospel became just another product someone was trying to sell me, and a paltry one at that because the church isn’t Viacom: it doesn’t have a Department of Brand Strategy and Planning. Staying relevant in late consumer capitalism requires highly sophisticated resources and the willingness to tailor your values to whatever your audience wants. In trying to compete in this market, the church has forfeited the one advantage it had in the game to attract disillusioned youth: authenticity. When it comes to intransigent values, the profit-driven world has zilch to offer. If Christian leaders weren’t so ashamed of those unvarnished values, they might have something more attractive than anything on today’s bleak moral market. In the meantime, they’ve lost one more kid to the competition.
Her are some of her conclusions:
This trend spreads beyond CCM into many areas of evangelical culture. The church is becoming increasingly consumer-friendly. Jacob Hill, director of “worship arts” at New Walk Church, describes the Sunday service music as “exciting, loud, powerful, and relevant,” and boasts that “a lot of people say they feel like they’ve just been at a rock concert.” Over the past ten years, I’ve visited churches that have Starbucks kiosks in the foyer and youth wings decked out with air hockey tables. I’ve witnessed a preacher stop his sermon to play a five-minute clip from Billy Madison. I’ve walked into a sanctuary that was blasting the Black Eyed Peas’s “Let’s Get it Started” to get the congregation pumped for the morning’s message, which was on joy. I have heard a pastor say, from a pulpit, “Hey, I’m not here to preach at anyone.” And yet, in spite of these efforts, churches are retaining only 4 percent of the young people raised in their congregations.
Despite all the affected teenage rebellion, I continued to call myself a Christian into my early twenties. When I finally stopped, it wasn’t because being a believer made me uncool or outdated or freakish. It was because being a Christian no longer meant anything. It was a label to slap on my Facebook page, next to my music preferences. The gospel became just another product someone was trying to sell me, and a paltry one at that because the church isn’t Viacom: it doesn’t have a Department of Brand Strategy and Planning. Staying relevant in late consumer capitalism requires highly sophisticated resources and the willingness to tailor your values to whatever your audience wants. In trying to compete in this market, the church has forfeited the one advantage it had in the game to attract disillusioned youth: authenticity. When it comes to intransigent values, the profit-driven world has zilch to offer. If Christian leaders weren’t so ashamed of those unvarnished values, they might have something more attractive than anything on today’s bleak moral market. In the meantime, they’ve lost one more kid to the competition.
Friday, August 12, 2011
"Closing down the show" and "aggressive pietism"
Internet Monk has a very interesting post about two churches that "closed down the show"... pulled the plug on entertainment, market driven, evangelical mega-church approach. (One church is the ELCA Community Church of Joy.) In its place they are pushing discipleship and spiritual formation. I have never been able to get a grip on what discipleship is. IM calls it "aggressive pietism" and wonders if the change in these churches approach is all that it seems.
His comments at the end of the article are worth posting here (Read the whole article here) :
What then, shall we say to these stories?
(1) Give these pastors and churches credit for waking up and seeing the problems.
(2) Give them credit for doing something about the problems.
(3) Give them credit for addressing some of evangelicalism’s most glaring weaknesses: selling out to American culture, providing entertainment worship, evaluating success on external measures, failing to make disciples, propping up a Christian subculture that takes Christians away from their mission in the world, and perverting Christian leadership into a competitive, entrepreneurial business vocation which can easily degenerate into personal kingdom building.
But I have some concerns, too.
(1) An aggressive pietism is not necessarily the best answer to consumeristic religion. To their credit, Carlson and Lueken recognize the tendency to become demanding and ungracious in promoting discipleship and spiritual formation, as well as the danger of encouraging spiritual elitism. Nevertheless, I wish more was said in both these stories about the overwhelming grace of God and about the irresistible attracting love and hospitality of Jesus in welcoming us out of our self-centered lives into the God-soaked reality of the Kingdom. Instead, I sometimes get the idea that now it is the church’s job to engineer spiritual formation and missional living simply by altering our message and getting passionate and changing our program so that it encourages people to get busy doing something different.
Whether we’re catering to consumerism or emphasizing spiritual formation, we can still find ourselves promoting self-centered religion. A lot of “law” gets press in these narratives—you must not be consumers, you must engage in serious spiritual practices, you must not merely seek entertainment, you must live missional lives, and so on. Despite its name, evangelicalism is not always strong on providing the objective teaching and means to counter our impulse to provide for our spiritual wellbeing through our own good works.
(2) Can we trust this kind of leadership? From what I’ve read in Walt Kallestad’s article and in Carlson and Lueken’s book, I would infer that these are solid, well-intentioned ministers who are trying to hear from God and lead their congregations in Christ. So what I say next is not personal, but more fundamental than that.
Were these and other pastors WRONG back in the 1980′s about the seeker movement? Did God lead them then, when they set up churches according to the seeker model and promoted “entertainment evangelism”? What are we to say about the dramatic change in understanding they received along the way? Is this just par for the course, a natural part of the journey of faith for a pastor and other church leaders?
And if so, what about all the people who trusted their certainty and passion at earlier stages of the journey? If those folks are not ready to “move on” when the leader takes a right turn and starts running down a different path, are they just out of luck? Thousands of people left the two churches whose stories are noted above. Why should any of them believe the next evangelical church, with no ties to any tradition or foundation bigger than itself, that speaks to them with certainty about God and right ways of living?
Are the methods of “doing church” subject to the whims and enthusiasms of church leaders who “ride the waves” of the Spirit? What’s to say this new emphasis on “spiritual formation” and “missional living” won’t go the way of the dinosaur when the next asteroid shower of church leadership fads hits?
There is a lot to recommend in these stories.
There are some fundamental questions still to be resolved.
His comments at the end of the article are worth posting here (Read the whole article here) :
What then, shall we say to these stories?
(1) Give these pastors and churches credit for waking up and seeing the problems.
(2) Give them credit for doing something about the problems.
(3) Give them credit for addressing some of evangelicalism’s most glaring weaknesses: selling out to American culture, providing entertainment worship, evaluating success on external measures, failing to make disciples, propping up a Christian subculture that takes Christians away from their mission in the world, and perverting Christian leadership into a competitive, entrepreneurial business vocation which can easily degenerate into personal kingdom building.
But I have some concerns, too.
(1) An aggressive pietism is not necessarily the best answer to consumeristic religion. To their credit, Carlson and Lueken recognize the tendency to become demanding and ungracious in promoting discipleship and spiritual formation, as well as the danger of encouraging spiritual elitism. Nevertheless, I wish more was said in both these stories about the overwhelming grace of God and about the irresistible attracting love and hospitality of Jesus in welcoming us out of our self-centered lives into the God-soaked reality of the Kingdom. Instead, I sometimes get the idea that now it is the church’s job to engineer spiritual formation and missional living simply by altering our message and getting passionate and changing our program so that it encourages people to get busy doing something different.
Whether we’re catering to consumerism or emphasizing spiritual formation, we can still find ourselves promoting self-centered religion. A lot of “law” gets press in these narratives—you must not be consumers, you must engage in serious spiritual practices, you must not merely seek entertainment, you must live missional lives, and so on. Despite its name, evangelicalism is not always strong on providing the objective teaching and means to counter our impulse to provide for our spiritual wellbeing through our own good works.
(2) Can we trust this kind of leadership? From what I’ve read in Walt Kallestad’s article and in Carlson and Lueken’s book, I would infer that these are solid, well-intentioned ministers who are trying to hear from God and lead their congregations in Christ. So what I say next is not personal, but more fundamental than that.
Were these and other pastors WRONG back in the 1980′s about the seeker movement? Did God lead them then, when they set up churches according to the seeker model and promoted “entertainment evangelism”? What are we to say about the dramatic change in understanding they received along the way? Is this just par for the course, a natural part of the journey of faith for a pastor and other church leaders?
And if so, what about all the people who trusted their certainty and passion at earlier stages of the journey? If those folks are not ready to “move on” when the leader takes a right turn and starts running down a different path, are they just out of luck? Thousands of people left the two churches whose stories are noted above. Why should any of them believe the next evangelical church, with no ties to any tradition or foundation bigger than itself, that speaks to them with certainty about God and right ways of living?
Are the methods of “doing church” subject to the whims and enthusiasms of church leaders who “ride the waves” of the Spirit? What’s to say this new emphasis on “spiritual formation” and “missional living” won’t go the way of the dinosaur when the next asteroid shower of church leadership fads hits?
There is a lot to recommend in these stories.
There are some fundamental questions still to be resolved.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The chief worship of God ...
... is to preach the Gospel.
Apology to the Augsburg Confession, XV, 42.
Apology to the Augsburg Confession, XV, 42.
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
Monday, August 08, 2011
Death Unplugged
A bit of incarnatus est greatest hits ... This was first posted here in April of 2009.
Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago for Touchstone Magazine. March of 2007.
Preacher, they are going to pull the plug. I think you better come over here.” When I hear these words, I recall the familiar terror at having yet again to face death. Not death in a book or as a faraway thought that “yes, people die,” but death coming to someone I know well, death that I will witness in a matter of hours.
I know that death will grab that family on the inside and squeeze from them emotions and grief they did not know they possessed. This family will look to me, the preacher, to speak, to say something.
But I also wonder at the choice of words. “Pulling the plug.” It is a phrase that has become more and more associated with the last moments of human life. The dear Christian woman who called me was not speaking of a dishwasher or a computer but a person, a man she loved, one whose death would break her heart. Yet she used sterile and mechanistic words to announce his coming death. They are pulling the plug.
No More Angels
Increasingly, the experience of death and even, yes, specifically Christian death (that is, Christians dying with Christians there to witness it) is mostly filled not with moments of meditation on Scripture, nor with prayer, nor even with bittersweet memories. No, the hours of passing are used up staring at computer screens that spit out mysterious data we barely understand but think somehow to be crucial.
Even if we are dying at home, we discuss medical issues, pain thresholds, internal organ performance. We watch our loved ones die while watching heart rates and oxygen levels and commenting on the fluctuations of blood pressure and kidney function. We die in hospitals and hospice care where the (mostly caring and loving) attendants adjust morphine levels and our ears are filled with the relentless hum of machines and IV drips. “His blood pressure dropped 10 points last hour. Might be the end.” “Can’t be long. His kidneys have shut down.”
Death comes to us not as angels carrying the soul to distant shores, not as a grim reaper grabbing his prey, not even as one falling asleep. Death comes as system failure, the machine of the body coming to a stop—as planned obsolescence. The doctors and attendants chronicle and interpret the confusing river of numbers and levels and screens with jaggedy lines scrolling on and on.
Healthcare workers are today’s high priests of death, the mediators between us and our loved ones, now patched into the machine of technological medicine, the machine that promises life and ultimately eases our way to mortality. The room becomes suddenly hushed when the one with the stethoscope enters. We watch his movements as carefully as primitive believers watch the gyrations of a witch doctor. Every move is analyzed, we are intensely curious about every word and gesture of the “medical professional,” every body part touched, every machine adjusted. His words are analyzed and pondered.
When we come to questions of death and dying, it is doctors and medical professionals who supply the answers. They speak of potassium levels and respirators and how sorry they are.
A philosophy professor I had in college once commented on how the dominant technology of the day becomes the dominant image we have of our mind and rationality and the workings of our bodies. If gears and pulleys run our machines, we tend to think of ourselves in terms of gears and pulleys.
If planting, harvest, and weather make up our way of life, elements like air and fire and water will suffice to explain the mystery of the human body. If computers or chemicals dominate our work and study, we frame our thinking about our bodies in terms of chemistry and computing. We are so sure that this is indeed the way our bodies work, and then the next age giggles at our simplicity and replaces the image.
Barren Perceptions
It is this way with death. We carry our frames of reference and images to the sickbed. Experiencing death these days is not only a matter of dying in antiseptic hospitals with “do not resuscitate” orders and a mindset that views us as natural systems or machines. We ourselves see things this way.
When we see someone die, it looks like something to us, like something an awful lot like a car engine sputtering when short of fuel or a computer going through its programmed checklist as it shuts itself off. At the threshold of death we do not battle a medical establishment or a naturalistic worldview crashing into piety; we confront our own barren perceptions of the human body and the moment of death.
The actual moment of death has always been viewed as a compressed, pregnant slice of time that distills the essence of that life which is ending. What happens in the last moments of life, the way in which a person dies, is of deep interest to those who live on. Those who grieve, whether devout or not, insist on telling the story of how the loved one died. Those last moments are instinctively held to be important, worthy of being recounted.
The Church has felt this as well. The last moments of the martyrs, filled though they may have been with intense suffering, were seen and proclaimed as physical messages of sanctity. The smell of Polycarp’s flesh burning was experienced as the sweet smell of incense.
The moments of death were messages that captured the essence of the person. The fate of the body carried a spiritual message. Gregory Nazianzus reported that his father died with the words and forms of the liturgy on his lips, thus displaying the content of his character for all to see. What was true of him in life showed itself in his physical posture at death.
Athanasius commented on the feet of St. Antony at his time of death that Antony lifted them up as to greet friends who were coming to him. The opponents of Luther insisted that his death had been a wretched one as his heresy finally racked his body at the moment of truth, while Lutherans still today repeat his last words as a summary of his life and teachings, “We are all beggars.”
What is common to all these last moments is the connection between the spiritual life and the physical life, the interpenetration, if you will, of soul and body. Many people once believed that the actions of the body at the crucial time of death were a reliable window into the state of the soul.
It is this connection between body and soul that we are increasingly unable to make. What we see when someone dies is more and more just a thing that stops working. We pull the plug. In the same way, we swap organs and tranfuse blood without much thought. The body has ceased to be a reliable and holy text on which to read the soul.
Climactic Death
What happens to the body is irrelevant to our free-floating spirituality. We see nothing in the body but sensations, a physicality that has nothing to do with our “spirit,” our true self, the “real me.”
Often in the hours that precede a slow, lingering death, especially when the dying person is comatose, I hear someone say, “That (meaning the body) is not him. He is not here anymore.” The awful scene of bodily failure is divorced from the person who inhabits those arms and legs and face.
There is, at every deathbed scene, a climactic moment when finally death arrives. Breathing stops, the machines are, yes, unplugged, and grief arrives in the heart. This moment may seem like the final act in mortality’s drama. Yet, in a real sense for Christians, death does not “end” with death. That is where it begins. Christian death, death modeled after Christ, may begin when the body dies but has its ending at the tomb, in the dirt.
More than funerals, more than eulogies or sermons or prayers, it is the committal service that anchors a truly Christian view of physical death. The disciplines, rules, and prayers associated with the committal of Christian bodies to the ground confess what the Church teaches about the death of the baptized. Where it is still practiced and has not been twisted by the indulgent egotism that has destroyed much funeral making, in the committal service, one may truly glimpse the meaning of Christian death.
With the reading of Psalms, with shouts of victory, the congregation moves to a hole in the dirt, a casket poised to disappear. All the attention at this point is directed to the dead body. The focus of the rite is not to point to a vague, continuing spiritual existence or to imagine where our loved one “really” is right now, but to consider the remains, the resting place of God-made bones and skin and hair.
We commend the body to rest, hoping in the return of Jesus Christ and the final vindication of God’s creation, now ruined. Here is the antidote to talk of IVs and respirators and morphine. Here the body is buried in the ground like Jesus. Dust to dust. Here we cast all our hope on the God who creates out of nothing, who created bodies from the same dirt that now receives them. Here the final likeness to Jesus that we know in this life is reached: buried in our baptism, buried in our death, just like him.
Final Triumph
Here finally is the real triumph over death, not through chemotherapy or catheters but faith. “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting,” we say, even as that body, completely lifeless and void, is swallowed by the earth. Swallowed, consumed, digested even, but not defeated. For, as the committal reminds us, God the Father made that body, God the Son redeemed that body with his blood, and the Holy Spirit made it his temple.
Placing the body in the ground is not the final sadness but the last defiance, for we go to the graveyard believing that on that great Easter to come it will be as St. Matthew says, that the tombs will break open and the bodies of the saints will rise to life.
Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago for Touchstone Magazine. March of 2007.
Preacher, they are going to pull the plug. I think you better come over here.” When I hear these words, I recall the familiar terror at having yet again to face death. Not death in a book or as a faraway thought that “yes, people die,” but death coming to someone I know well, death that I will witness in a matter of hours.
I know that death will grab that family on the inside and squeeze from them emotions and grief they did not know they possessed. This family will look to me, the preacher, to speak, to say something.
But I also wonder at the choice of words. “Pulling the plug.” It is a phrase that has become more and more associated with the last moments of human life. The dear Christian woman who called me was not speaking of a dishwasher or a computer but a person, a man she loved, one whose death would break her heart. Yet she used sterile and mechanistic words to announce his coming death. They are pulling the plug.
No More Angels
Increasingly, the experience of death and even, yes, specifically Christian death (that is, Christians dying with Christians there to witness it) is mostly filled not with moments of meditation on Scripture, nor with prayer, nor even with bittersweet memories. No, the hours of passing are used up staring at computer screens that spit out mysterious data we barely understand but think somehow to be crucial.
Even if we are dying at home, we discuss medical issues, pain thresholds, internal organ performance. We watch our loved ones die while watching heart rates and oxygen levels and commenting on the fluctuations of blood pressure and kidney function. We die in hospitals and hospice care where the (mostly caring and loving) attendants adjust morphine levels and our ears are filled with the relentless hum of machines and IV drips. “His blood pressure dropped 10 points last hour. Might be the end.” “Can’t be long. His kidneys have shut down.”
Death comes to us not as angels carrying the soul to distant shores, not as a grim reaper grabbing his prey, not even as one falling asleep. Death comes as system failure, the machine of the body coming to a stop—as planned obsolescence. The doctors and attendants chronicle and interpret the confusing river of numbers and levels and screens with jaggedy lines scrolling on and on.
Healthcare workers are today’s high priests of death, the mediators between us and our loved ones, now patched into the machine of technological medicine, the machine that promises life and ultimately eases our way to mortality. The room becomes suddenly hushed when the one with the stethoscope enters. We watch his movements as carefully as primitive believers watch the gyrations of a witch doctor. Every move is analyzed, we are intensely curious about every word and gesture of the “medical professional,” every body part touched, every machine adjusted. His words are analyzed and pondered.
When we come to questions of death and dying, it is doctors and medical professionals who supply the answers. They speak of potassium levels and respirators and how sorry they are.
A philosophy professor I had in college once commented on how the dominant technology of the day becomes the dominant image we have of our mind and rationality and the workings of our bodies. If gears and pulleys run our machines, we tend to think of ourselves in terms of gears and pulleys.
If planting, harvest, and weather make up our way of life, elements like air and fire and water will suffice to explain the mystery of the human body. If computers or chemicals dominate our work and study, we frame our thinking about our bodies in terms of chemistry and computing. We are so sure that this is indeed the way our bodies work, and then the next age giggles at our simplicity and replaces the image.
Barren Perceptions
It is this way with death. We carry our frames of reference and images to the sickbed. Experiencing death these days is not only a matter of dying in antiseptic hospitals with “do not resuscitate” orders and a mindset that views us as natural systems or machines. We ourselves see things this way.
When we see someone die, it looks like something to us, like something an awful lot like a car engine sputtering when short of fuel or a computer going through its programmed checklist as it shuts itself off. At the threshold of death we do not battle a medical establishment or a naturalistic worldview crashing into piety; we confront our own barren perceptions of the human body and the moment of death.
The actual moment of death has always been viewed as a compressed, pregnant slice of time that distills the essence of that life which is ending. What happens in the last moments of life, the way in which a person dies, is of deep interest to those who live on. Those who grieve, whether devout or not, insist on telling the story of how the loved one died. Those last moments are instinctively held to be important, worthy of being recounted.
The Church has felt this as well. The last moments of the martyrs, filled though they may have been with intense suffering, were seen and proclaimed as physical messages of sanctity. The smell of Polycarp’s flesh burning was experienced as the sweet smell of incense.
The moments of death were messages that captured the essence of the person. The fate of the body carried a spiritual message. Gregory Nazianzus reported that his father died with the words and forms of the liturgy on his lips, thus displaying the content of his character for all to see. What was true of him in life showed itself in his physical posture at death.
Athanasius commented on the feet of St. Antony at his time of death that Antony lifted them up as to greet friends who were coming to him. The opponents of Luther insisted that his death had been a wretched one as his heresy finally racked his body at the moment of truth, while Lutherans still today repeat his last words as a summary of his life and teachings, “We are all beggars.”
What is common to all these last moments is the connection between the spiritual life and the physical life, the interpenetration, if you will, of soul and body. Many people once believed that the actions of the body at the crucial time of death were a reliable window into the state of the soul.
It is this connection between body and soul that we are increasingly unable to make. What we see when someone dies is more and more just a thing that stops working. We pull the plug. In the same way, we swap organs and tranfuse blood without much thought. The body has ceased to be a reliable and holy text on which to read the soul.
Climactic Death
What happens to the body is irrelevant to our free-floating spirituality. We see nothing in the body but sensations, a physicality that has nothing to do with our “spirit,” our true self, the “real me.”
Often in the hours that precede a slow, lingering death, especially when the dying person is comatose, I hear someone say, “That (meaning the body) is not him. He is not here anymore.” The awful scene of bodily failure is divorced from the person who inhabits those arms and legs and face.
There is, at every deathbed scene, a climactic moment when finally death arrives. Breathing stops, the machines are, yes, unplugged, and grief arrives in the heart. This moment may seem like the final act in mortality’s drama. Yet, in a real sense for Christians, death does not “end” with death. That is where it begins. Christian death, death modeled after Christ, may begin when the body dies but has its ending at the tomb, in the dirt.
More than funerals, more than eulogies or sermons or prayers, it is the committal service that anchors a truly Christian view of physical death. The disciplines, rules, and prayers associated with the committal of Christian bodies to the ground confess what the Church teaches about the death of the baptized. Where it is still practiced and has not been twisted by the indulgent egotism that has destroyed much funeral making, in the committal service, one may truly glimpse the meaning of Christian death.
With the reading of Psalms, with shouts of victory, the congregation moves to a hole in the dirt, a casket poised to disappear. All the attention at this point is directed to the dead body. The focus of the rite is not to point to a vague, continuing spiritual existence or to imagine where our loved one “really” is right now, but to consider the remains, the resting place of God-made bones and skin and hair.
We commend the body to rest, hoping in the return of Jesus Christ and the final vindication of God’s creation, now ruined. Here is the antidote to talk of IVs and respirators and morphine. Here the body is buried in the ground like Jesus. Dust to dust. Here we cast all our hope on the God who creates out of nothing, who created bodies from the same dirt that now receives them. Here the final likeness to Jesus that we know in this life is reached: buried in our baptism, buried in our death, just like him.
Final Triumph
Here finally is the real triumph over death, not through chemotherapy or catheters but faith. “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting,” we say, even as that body, completely lifeless and void, is swallowed by the earth. Swallowed, consumed, digested even, but not defeated. For, as the committal reminds us, God the Father made that body, God the Son redeemed that body with his blood, and the Holy Spirit made it his temple.
Placing the body in the ground is not the final sadness but the last defiance, for we go to the graveyard believing that on that great Easter to come it will be as St. Matthew says, that the tombs will break open and the bodies of the saints will rise to life.
Saturday, August 06, 2011
British accents, harmonies, a bunch of ukeleles, bow ties and a .... Hank Williams song !?!?!?!?!?
Not a combination one sees every day. The ukulele orchestra of Great Britain - Setting the woods on fire.
Friday, August 05, 2011
Issues Etc. Blog of the Week: This one
Just saw that incarnatus est is Pastor Todd Wilken's Issues Etc. Blog of the Week 8-5-2011. Hear the discussion here. Thanks, Pastor Wilken.
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
A Christian is even hidden from himself
The topic (“I believe in one holy Christian church”) is a matter of faith as
much as any other. Thus reason cannot detect it, even if one uses magnify-
ing glasses. The devil can certainly cover it over with scandals and by
means of various parties, about which you must be vexed. In the same way,
God can also hide it under maladies and all kinds of shortcomings, so that
you end up becoming a fool and would come to the wrong conclusion
about it.
It is not to be visualized, but believed. But faith deals with that
which a person cannot see, Heb. 11[:1]. And it also sings the song with its
Lord: “Blessed is the one who takes no offense in me” [Matt. 11:6]. A Chris-
tian is even hidden from himself, so that he does not see his holiness and
his virtue, but sees in himself nothing but lack of virtue and a lack of holi-
ness. And you, a rough-hewn smarty, want to see Christianity with your
blind reason and impure eyes?
Luther's Introduction to the Book of Revelation cited in Bayer, Martin Luther's Theology, 278.
much as any other. Thus reason cannot detect it, even if one uses magnify-
ing glasses. The devil can certainly cover it over with scandals and by
means of various parties, about which you must be vexed. In the same way,
God can also hide it under maladies and all kinds of shortcomings, so that
you end up becoming a fool and would come to the wrong conclusion
about it.
It is not to be visualized, but believed. But faith deals with that
which a person cannot see, Heb. 11[:1]. And it also sings the song with its
Lord: “Blessed is the one who takes no offense in me” [Matt. 11:6]. A Chris-
tian is even hidden from himself, so that he does not see his holiness and
his virtue, but sees in himself nothing but lack of virtue and a lack of holi-
ness. And you, a rough-hewn smarty, want to see Christianity with your
blind reason and impure eyes?
Luther's Introduction to the Book of Revelation cited in Bayer, Martin Luther's Theology, 278.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Church numbers
Q: What’s the size of U.S. churches?
A: The median church in the U.S. has 75 regular participants in worship on Sunday mornings, according to the National Congregations Study.
Notice that researchers measured the median church size — the point at which half the churches are smaller and half the churches are larger — rather than the average (186 attenders reported by the USCLS survey http://www.uscongregations.org/charact-cong.htm ), which is larger due to the influence of very large churches.
But while the United States has a large number of very small churches, most people attend larger churches. The National Congregations Study estimated that the smaller churches draw only 11 percent of those who attend worship. Meanwhile, 50 percent of churchgoers attended the largest 10% of congregations (350 regular participants and up).
Read more here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)