the god’s aren’t angry [synopsis]

Below is my attempt to piece together my notes from Rob Bell’s talk a few nights ago.  Hopefully it provides a somewhat coherent translation of his message:

the mite

This whole resignation and switching to a new position thing has been terrifying.  For the most part, I have not enjoyed it.  I am excited about my new position, but this whole arena of raising personal support is humbling.  At times it just feels humiliating.  It’s always stressful.

Tonight we were invited over for dinner at some friends’ house.  When we came out and got in the van to go home, there was an envelope laying on the driver’s seat.  Inside was a card from someone we know, and inside the card was a few hundred dollars worth of grocery gift cards. 

We were stunned.

And we know that the person who gave us the card is not at all what you would consider rich or well-off.   As far as I know, this wasn’t just a handful of disposable income she was throwing our direction.  It was a chunk out of her life.  She gave what she had in order to take care of us, to bless us with something practical and tangible. 

Jesus called his disciples over and said, “The truth is that this poor widow gave more to the collection than all the others put together. All the others gave what they’ll never miss; she gave extravagantly what she couldn’t afford—she gave her all.”   (Mark 12:43-44)

[dis]connection

I spent this past weekend in Seattle.  The first night in the city I stayed with an old friend from high school, and we spent the evening catching up, hopping from one of his hangouts to the next.  My friend is single, and I asked him how the search was going for a relationship and whether it was easy or hard to meet a girl in a city.  My assumptionn was that it would be easier: with so many people coming into contact with one another, it seems logical that you would run into more people, have more opportunities for meeting people and getting together.  But my friend said that he only tends to frequent a handful of places, and a lot of other people tend to do the same…so you end up seeing the same people all the time.  In the midst of this, mini-communities tend to form around these places (even if not everyone there knows one another).

By the end of the night we ended up at an English-style pub called The George and Dragon.  My friend mentioned that this, too, was a place he frequented.  He told me that during the week there are actually quite a few older British folks that frequent the place to hang out, converse with others, watch a football (soccer) game.  During World Cup season it’s almost standing room only.  But on Friday and Saturday nights (which is when we were there), a younger crowd tends to fill the place.  As we were sitting there, surrounded by white walls and dark wood trim and a vintage poster of Winston Churchill above my head, I started thinking about what a center of community a place like this serves to be.  It’s a gathering place.  It’s a place where people show up regularly and networks of friends and people brush together and interact and sometimes interconnect.  It’s a space that allows people to come together, that encourages it.

The next day I was with some different people, and one of them made a comment about how the suburbs “kill your soul.”  They talked about how seperated people were there and how disjointed everything was. 

“It’s just stripmalls and houses.  There isn’t any culture there.”

Within twelve hours I went from a place where people were regularly coming together and creating a culture of interaction and art and music, to a place where everyone keeps to themselves in a culture of uniformity and individualism.  You might know the person living across the culdisac from you, but you don’t actually know them.  And it somehow feels empty, hollow.  It drains you.

So as I drove back over the Cascade Range to rural home and community, I thought about how that applied generally to where I live, but specifically to how the Church functions in that sort of a place.  Where I’m from, we don’t have places that you can just walk a few blocks to.  Sure, there’s a small downtown, but nothing that really creates a common space for people.  People are forced to drive into nearby towns and smaller cities to find this sorts of places.  Everyone here is spread out, distanced.  We live in a small river valley, surrounded by the same mountains, but we go somewhere else for connection.  Outside of high school sports, there isn’t really any sort of culture that people seem to be apart of.

So in this kind of culture, one of rurality and distance, both among and as one of “the hill folk”…how do we create times and spaces for connection?  How do we help facilitate the genesis of a connection culture, one that encourages and helps give birth to a shared creativity and vision of what it means to be a certain type of person in a certain type of place? 

keep the home fires burning

“The tales must be told and retold, or the memories slowly die.” 
- Conn and Hal Iggulden, The Dangerous Book for Boys

I think this plays out so often in rural areas like mine, memories and stories are passed down from year to year, from person to person.  Sometimes they become small legends.

In high school I was on the wrestling team.  I wasn’t very good.  I was around 5 ft. tall and as a freshman weighed 85 lbs.  Most of my matches for that 4-year stretch of high school athletic participation ended in me lossing: always to a pin.

But a few times I won.

One time in particular was at a tournament my junior year.  I pinned every guy in the tournament bracket and took first place for my weight class.  I don’t know what was going on with me that day, but it was like something clicked and I just knew what to do and everything just seemed to be in this intense groove.  I got a medal and the fame and glory of being written about and having my picture taken for the local newspaper.  And then, for the next season and a half of the sport, I proceeded to lost almost every conceivable match.

About a year ago our family went into the local pizza place, and already having dinner in there were the parents (and aunts and uncles) of one of the guys I was on the team with.  They saw me and said hi and asked how I had been since high school…and then mentioned that just a couple nights before they had been talking about the day I one that tournament.  They then asked what happened, what was going on that day and why it didn’t happen again after that. 

I said I didn’t know. 

They said it sure was fun to watch, this scrawny guy taking it to every wrestler he went up against.

I said, yeah, it was a pretty cool day.

Then the conversation fizzled out, as there wasn’t much else to say about it.  But I walked away wondering how my day at that tournament actually came up in the conversation of these people on some random night….ten years after it happened?  What’s the purpose in that?  Why was it so memorable, something they needed to keep telling?

It’s important to people around here, to not forget stories and people.  When we first moved back to town, we rented a house.  Anytime we told someone where we lived, the person we were talking to would say: “Oh, that’s so-and-so’s old house.”  The list of people who had cycled through the house grew longer and longer with every Change of Address form we filled out.

Why is it that these memories, these placards upon rental houses and high school wrestling tournaments, are so integral to life and community?

what I didn’t give up

The other day a friend asked me what I gave up for Lent.  My answer?

Nothing.

I had actually been pondering this for the previous couple days before he asked me.  I thought about giving up coffee, but I wussed out on that (ironically, though, I’ve been drinking less).  I thought of others things I could give up…but nothing really worth it. 

But leading up to this point I had been getting more and more stoked about spring.  The final bits of snow had finally melted in our yard and I was able to spend a couple days pruning some shrubs and just hanging around the yard.  Despite all the wind and still cold air, I could see that some of the trees were starting to bud.  I was ecstatic.  I was tired of snow and sleet and cold and staying inside all of the time.  I wanted spring.  I wanted life and green and newness and the music that pours forth as flowers open up to the sun.  I was more excited for a changing of season than I ever have been in my life. 

So then I woke up on the first day of Lent…and it was DUMPING snow outside.  And it didn’t stop all day.  And the next day it snowed some more.  And my soul sunk.

I was actually caught off guard at how this affected me.  I had been anticipating this for so long, and it seemed so there and so tangible and I had actually tasted just a bit of life…and then this cold blanket of nothing smothered it from my sight and senses.  And that day I realized that I didn’t need to give anything up for Lent, because what I truly yearned for was out of my reach.  The snow would be my bit of personal darkness for the next 40 days.  In the wilderness.  In bondage.  In expectation of life and redemption and exodus and renewal.

This season, my Lent is everywhere.  It’s in the driveway.  It’s on my steps.  It’s on my windshield.  It’s tracked in on my shoes.  But eventually it will recede.  Eventually it will give way to an event that is inescapable…and so will I.  As the tips of bulbs break free from their dark sleep, so will my soul unfurl and instinctively turn its face toward that light which is truly Light.

So no, I technically didn’t give anything up for Lent, because this year, my longing comes from something that I received.

anti-fundamentalist fundamentalism

From what I can gather, the global community is increasingly becoming one of funamentalism.  There is of course religious fundamentalism, with each group and it’s militant religious patriots doing whatever is necessary to show the world and the other religions why they are ‘the one.’  But I’ve also been thinking about other forms of fundamentalism here in the U.S.  What about the political arena and its extreme polarization between ‘right’ and ‘left’…’conservative’ and ‘liberal?’  Recently I’ve had thoughts about consumeristic and anti-consumeristic fundamentalism, as well as environmental fundamentalism.  Here’s how it seems to play out:

Someone doesn’t completely agree with the current ideology and/or methodology of something.  The reaction is to then so completely dismiss or act against said ideology that they jump to the polar opposite and establish it as the proper way against the other way.  By doing so, they reject the excess of the previous model…but completely bypass the more healthy place of being, moving beyond and settling into a form of fundamentalism that may be different, but just as completely distorts reality and misses the mark. 

Is the answer to consumerism to reject buying anything, especially anything of substantial monetary value?  Do we physically transplant ourselves outside of the society so obsessed with it?  Does rejecting a consumeristic fundamentalism have to look and be so extreme?  Can I ever buy something at Wal-Mart without being guilty of hopping in bed with Empire and Oppression? Does the rejection of something always mean acquiring its exact opposite?

This morning I was thinking about this issue in regards to religion (specifically Christianity) and wonder how fundamentalism, in light of an increasing fundamentalism around it, may seek to even more compare/contrast itself and prove itself right.  This was specifically in regards to apologetics, which seems to always be fueled by the desire to ‘prove’ something to someone, forcing them to make a decision.  These seemed to me to be very fundamentalist in nature.  I started thinking about how the emerging conversation and church seems to focus more on being missional and incarnational, rather than adhering to a correct form of rhetoric. 

It seems to me, if the world only continues to become extremely more fundamental in how it works and functions and deals with itself, with each group and faction trying to be louder than the others,  the Christian’s natural response would be to enter into that feud and try to drown out the competing voices (unfortunately by employing the same tactics it seems to abhor in others).   But what if the way you function is more subversive, more like yeast in a ball of dough or a vine creeping throughout the garden?  What if, to avoid the dangers of fundamentalism, we worked and lived on a different level that skirted and hopefully bypassed those pitfalls altogether?  But this begs the question:

In an age where the battle cry is, “You’ve got to stand for something…and then let everyone know beyond a shadow of a doubt what it is you stand for!” …what does it look like to stand for something but not in that way?  And what if you do it in that different way, but the reason is primarily to simply distance yourself from the ugly bellowing of that scene?  Is that enough?  I’m sure some (namely fundamentalists) would say that those who did were simply being ‘ashamed of the gospel’ or something similar.  Various small groups have started up at my church and are going through a recent curriculum put out by a popular ministry company.  The foundation of the series is that “truth is on trial,” and it’s our job as followers of Christ to stand for truth in a postmodern world (where the term ’postmodern’ seems to simply mean ‘relativism’).  The videos take place in a university type atmosphere, with the ’professor’ discussing areas of philosophy and science and everything else, and how the world has always been out to attack the truth (for example, by creating ideas like evolution).  From my perspective, this is the very thing we need to be avoiding, not only because I disagree with such simplistic and binary thinking, but because it just enters into the same vicious circle that everyone else is apart of.  You’re rejecting someone else’s fundamentalism by engaging in your own.

So what does a life look like that is about keeping quiet for the sake of Christ?  What does a life look like that doesn’t reject something by accepting its polar opposite, but simply shedding the unhealthy aspects and attempting to walk a more difficult (but proper) alternative path?  What does a life look like that grabs the attention of the world, not by its ability to shout, but by its inistence on remaining quiet and not lifting yet another voice in the cacauphony?

among the hill folk

The word pagan is from Latin paganus, an adjective originally meaning “rural”, “rustic” or “of the country.” As a noun, paganus was used to mean “country dweller, villager.” In colloquial use, it would mean much the same as calling someone a ‘bumpkin’ or a ‘hillbilly’. From its earliest beginnings, Christianity spread much more quickly in major urban areas (like Antioch, Alexandria, Corinth, Rome) than in the countryside (in fact, the early church was almost entirely urban), and soon the word for “country dweller” became synonymous with someone who was “not a Christian,” giving rise to the modern meaning of “pagan.” This may, in part, have had to do with the conservative nature of rural people, who may have been more resistant to the new ideas of Christianity than those who lived in major urban centers. However, it may have also resulted from early Christian missionaries focusing their efforts within major population centers (e.g. St. Paul), rather than throughout an expansive, yet sparsely populated, countryside (hence, the Latin term suggesting “uneducated country folk”). [for more, go here.]

A lot of the authors of the books I have read, as well as church planters and house church planters, seem to be situated in urban areas.  I read about lots of emerging churches and liquid churches and new communities and I visit their websites…and they all seem to be contained in urban/metro areas.  

I, however, am not. 

I would say the environment I am in can best be described as ‘pagan’…in the most original sense of the word.  People here aren’t all that keen on new ideas and worldviews.  What they’ve done for years (and decades…or even generations) works, so why mess with it?  I’m sure I could be making a gross generalization here, but I would venture to say this is a long step away from more urban areas, which I would say can still be classified as environments where new ideas are hashed out and tried out and people are quick to jump on the newest and latest philosophy or ethos.  But this doesn’t happen where I live.

you say you want a revolution…conference

I attended a conference a couple weeks ago called You Say You Want A Revolution, put on by Off the Map.  I’ve been wanting to blog about it since then, but haven’t been quite able to get my thoughts about it in coherent order.  I’m not even sure I’ve managed to at this point, but wanted to get it done anyway.

To put it simply, I really enjoyed the conference.  Over the last couple weeks I’ve been keeping up on the Revolution blog and have honestly been a bit surprised at how disappointed some people were and how critical they have been of what went on.  Some seem upset that so much emphasis was placed on ‘being kind’ and not enough on ‘truth.’  I really don’t get this.  Sure, if all we ever talked about was being kind and never did anything else, I’d be getting worried.  But I’ve been following the Way of Jesus for about 10 years or so now, and even in that short amount of time I would say the vast majority of the atmosphere and underlying attitude in what I’ve learned is all about being right (and if that doesn’t come across as being all that kind, well too bad for that person on the receiving end, because sometimes the truth hurts…).  I can’t think of really any times where the ideas of kindness and mercy and grace and how to actively express them in our interactions with others (especially with those outside the faith) were really focused on and discussed or taught about at length.  It’s always about truth and ’standing for truth.’  I’ve been a youth pastor for 4+ years now, and most of the messages I hear at conferences and youth rallies and festivals are about encouraging students to ’stand for truth’ in their schools.

I don’t think we’re really in short supply of learning how to be right.  But I do think many Christians are pretty sparse when it comes to being kind and gracious.  And if we’re lacking in our exercise of grace and kindness, why don’t we spend some purposeful time on that and figure out out to integrate it into our understanding of truth and interaction with others.  They two aren’t mutually exclusive, nor does one need to be dropped for the other.  But the way some have critiqued the conference you would start to think so.  True, parts of the conference really honed in on kindness (especially Brian McLaren and same of the interviews with various types of people onstage).  I don’t recall Barna talking about this in any of his talks.  I don’t recall any of the workshops hammering into people “BE KIND!  BE KIND!  FORSAKE TRUTH…AND BE KIND!”  Each workshop leader(s) came with their own focus and dealt with that, and they were all extremely varied in what they dealt with.  So, again, I don’t see what the problem is.

In regards to other aspects and my personal thoughts of the conference, I’ll just quickfire some of my thoughts: