Heartbeat for Worship - Fayetteville State University, September 5th

Last year I participated in a worship celebration called A Heartbeat for Worship. The celebration featured William Johnson, Lou Santiago, Jr., and Louis Conte.  Here's an excerpt from the Heartbeat for Worship website:

"The Heartbeat for Worship Celebration is an evening worship concert with different musical styles from several different countries from all around the globe.  This will be done as a celebration to God and to his diversity and the spirit of excellence in worship.  It is our desire...to help promote unity amongst believers in Worship to our Father God and break down cultural and racial barriers that exist within the Church..."

If you're in the Fayetteville, NC area on September 5th, 2009 I invite you to come and experience this truly remarkable worship celebration that bridges barriers between people of different races and Christian traditions.  Check out this trailer as well as a few other videos featuring Louis Conte and Lou Santiago, Jr. (and yours truly) and come on out on September 5th to experience truly multi-cultural worship.

Here's a video of Lou Santiago, Jr.:

And here's one of Louis Conte (and yes, that is Phil Collins at the end):

Teaching Nonviolence to Young People: Any Suggestions?

One of the best things about being a youth worker in a United Methodist Church in the North Carolina Conference is the fact that there is an entire event planned in July each year for the purpose of getting young people to reflect theologically on social and cultural issues affecting the world today.

Each year at this event, called Annual Conference Session, youth are able to meet in "interest groups" on various topics ranging from using music in worship to current events around the world.  I've been invited to lead an interest group called "Being Peacemakers in a World of Violence" and I'm quite excited!!  I get each group for one hour and a half session and I'm wondering what ideas some of you might have for activities which get young people thinking about Christian responses to violence.

I'm thinking that in the beginning of the interest group I'll be talking a bit about violence in the Bible and then outline some options for Christian responses to violence.  But for now I'm at a loss for activities that can help young people begin thinking about and becoming practitioners of Christian nonviolence.

So I'm all ears.  Any ideas?

Youth Ministry and the Limits of Knowing: Carl McColman on Language and the Divine

Recently I have been lucky enough to discover or re-discover a number of blogs that I haven't read in a while.  One of my new favorites is that of Carl McColman, The Website of Unknowing.  Mike Morrell led me to Carl's website and I'm glad he did!  If anyone were looking for a great listing of Mystical literature and theology, I'd tell them to start at this page on the Website of Unknowing.

In addition to being a wonderful blogger, Carl is also an author of numerous books on mysticism and spirituality.  I've been slowly reading his book entitled Spirituality: Where Body and Soul Encounter the Sacred, which was re-published in 2008 with the title, Spirituality: A Postmodern and Interfaith Approach to Cultivating a Relationship with God.  As far as I know the two editions are pretty much the same with different covers and subtitles.

At any rate, I've been reading the section on prayer since that's something I've always struggled with in my own spiritual journey.  And I ran across a fascinating section on silence and the limitations of human knowing, particularly with regard to human language.

For all the talk among emerging/emergent folks about "epistemological humility," I think Carl McColman's thoughts on silence and prayer have done more for me in terms of allowing me to understand my limitations than any emerging/emergent writers have done.  That's not to say I haven't been helped in this regard by many in the "conversation" but I think Cal put it best when he wrote the following:

Ultimately, language fails before the Great Mystery.  As language fails, so also do all our concepts, ideas, notions, and depictions of "God," "the Sacred," "the Divine."  We may say that God is eternal and omnipresent and perfectly good, but words like "eternal" and "omnipresent" and "good" and "perfect" all signify something that we humans understand in terms of our own experience.  Since the nature of God transcends all human experience (and indeed transcends the universe of space and time itself), our language cannot adequately describe God, since the qualities of God exist beyond the limits of a word's possible usage.  If words cannot adequately describe even the attributes of God, how can words ever describe God's essence?

Recognizing the inability of language to fully represent God, we are left only with silence.  This applies not just to literal silence (both internal and external), but to metaphorical "silences" as well.  Just as silence is defined as the absense of sound, metaphorical silence may involve the absense of language, the absense of light, the absense of certainty or meaning.  Silence and darkness, in fact, are siblings in the realm of spirituality.  God is light, but sometimes the light is so dazzling that we all can percieve is a "darkness" - like turning on a light in a dark room and being blinded until our eyes adjust.

More and more these days, I'm finding myself in need of silence.  Especially when I think about my work with the youth @ Centenary UMC, the desire to help them cultivate habits of listening and stillness seem to permeate my thoughts.  Which, of course, is difficult when churches expect "results."  By "results," of course, they mean an exciting youth "program."  But in my five or so years of doing youth ministry, I've never really been "in to" doing "program-oriented" youth ministry.  In spite of my efforts toward a "presence-centered youth ministry" I think I have often fallen prey to the temptation to work for tangible results like higher attendance and the praise of coleagues, parents and church members.

This, of course, has led me to desire - even crave - more times of silence and to cultivate (imperfectly, of course) my ability to listen before I speak.  I know Carl wasn't writing especially for youth workers but I do believe we who work with youth in the church ought to think through the implications of what it would mean for us to give up some of our certainty about God, theology and even (or especially) the way we work with our youth.  Of course, we can agree that there are some "best pactices" for youth ministry but we need to be more aware of the way(s) that our use of language and space as well as our cultivation of relationships can potentially be manipulative, disingenuous and even maybe harmful to the young people with whom we work.  What might it mean to help young people to cultivate habits of listening and silence?  What might it mean for youth ministers to do the same?

What if the iMonk is Right - Finding Hope in the Coming Evangelical Collapse

“I sit in church every Sunday morning…for a full hour…and I feel nothing.  I get nothing.  I experience nothing.  You say you wonder why some parents don’t bring their children to youth group, don’t make them come to Sunday school and seem not to care that their children aren’t involved with church.  I say you should just look around.  Nobody really cares about this stuff.  Most people come because it looks good...People are leaving because God’s Spirit is leading them to the one place where they’re sure to hear God speak – private devotion, friendship and family.  I’ve taught Sunday School for ten years and I’ve never seen things this bad…this empty.”  (From a recent conversation with an anonymous Sunday School teacher)

A few months ago, Michael Spencer, A.K.A. the internet Monk, wrote an important and heavily blogged about piece about the impending collapse of evangelicalism in the West (particularly America).  The full-text can be found here.  The iMonk chronicles six main reasons why he thinks evangelicalism is on a quick descent into possible non-existence:

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism
2. Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people the evangelical Christian faith in an orthodox form that can take root and survive the secular onslaught
3. Evangelical churches have now passed into a three part chapter: 1) mega-churches that are consumer driven, 2) churches that are dying and 3) new churches that whose future is dependent on a large number of factors.
4. Despite some very successful developments in the last 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can hold the line in the rising tide of secularism.
5. The deterioration and collapse of the evangelical core will eventually weaken the missional-compassionate work of the evangelical movement
6. Much of this collapse will come in areas of the country where evangelicals imagine themselves strong...At the core of this collapse will be the inability to pass on, to our children, a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.
   

I’ve had plenty of time to think about the iMonk’s assertions and so, although I’m incredibly late to the game, I’ve got a few thoughts of my own derived – in part – from my experience over the past six years in youth ministry in “mainline churches.”  Granted, six years isn’t an eternity in ministry but I do think it’s long enough to notice some important cultural shifts.

In my experience, mainline churches - even in the South - don't conceive of themselves as "evangelicals."  Despite this phraseological discrepancy, I think the Mainline churches must be included in the iMonk's assessment.  Among the most prominent factors is the growing dissatisfaction with the top-down hierarchical nature of most of the mainline denominations.  I think people - baby boomers and their children - are beginning to figure out the institutional church's big secret: that the clergy class is just as clueless as the rest of us.

For all our theological education, our "leadership skills" and our cultural engagement, pastors and other ministry workers are increasingly unable to provide compelling reasons why others should live engaged lives of Christian faith.

Case in point - a local church in my area is planning a revival.  The publically stated purpose: to bring the "un-churched" back into the church."  Ministry leaders are increasingly out of touch with the reality that, by and large, Western culture stepped outside the doors of the church about 30 years ago and most of them simply aren't looking back.  Language of “churched” and “unchurched” either sounds foreign, silly or creepy to most folks to whom it refers.

The reality is this: I work in a "traditional" mainline church and I love what I do.  I pray that God will continue to work in all of the forms of church as we continue to move into the future and work for the coming of the Kingdom of God.  In spite of my work and my hope, however, I have the distinct feeling that I'm riding a big wave on a sinking ship.  I believe that there's a future for intentional and communal Christian formation in the 21st century and beyond.  I am highly skeptical, however, of the ability of any institutional form of Christianity to truly "be" that sort of community.

In the past, I have been critical of folks like Frank Viola for criticizing and speaking out against practices of institutional churches which have no basis in scripture.  The main reason I think I've been critical, however, is that the logical conclusions of such assertions leave me without a job.

I wonder how many others are in similar situations: seeing so much that's wrong with the church but failing to speak out in order to survive.  How long can ministers continue to reap the benefits of "working for the Lord" while at the same time stubbornly hardening our hearts to what God can do perfectly well without our help?
What options are there for a class of people - the "minister" class - whose major skill sets are "preaching and visiting?"  I'm reminded of a lecture that Wendell Berry delivered during my year at Duke Divinity School in which he more or less said that most pastors today are useless outside the safe walls of what we so arrogantly call "Church."  Pastors, he said, ought to learn a trade so that they can actually make a meaningful contribution to their communities. 

I think he's right.  At the very least, those who minister in today's institutional churches ought to start looking outside the church for sources of income.  The current situation of the church is unsustainable.  I, of course, am writing this as one who benefits from this unsustainable system.  And, of course, I am more than willing to admit that I don’t have all the answers.  What I’ve got is a wife and a son that I love more than my own life so I’m willing to make some compromises so that we can pay our bills.  Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love working in youth ministry at my current church.  But I’m becoming increasingly uncomfortable with deriving all of my livelihood from money that could just as easily go to start a community garden or provide food for the homeless or any number of other forms of community development.

I find hope in the emerging / emergent conversation at the same time that some (including, sometimes, myself) are also disappointed with its (lack of) direction.  I don't have a lot of answers but I believe there's hope for the church.  I just pray that people will begin to see the potential beauty in this mess we call church.

You Will All Be My Witnesses - or, what do you do when "something happens" to you @ the Eucharist?

So I've begun my work at Centenary United Methodist Church in Smithfield, NC and my primary work will be among youth, young adults and (partly) children.  HOWEVER, as a condition of my being hired, I asked that I be allowed to assist in leading some of the various regular worship gatherings - primarily Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights.

Without fail, my first Sunday and Wednesday I was one of the "celebrants" in the Eucharistic gatherings held on those days.  On Wednesday night, I was called upon (without notice) to assist with the Eucharist.  While our pastor, David, was reading from the Methodist hymnbook...

"The Lord be with you..." "And also with you..."

...it was my job to prepare the bread and the wine for the Eucharistic meal.  So, on cue, when David said the appropriate words...

"On the night in which he gave himself up for us, he took bread, gave thanks to you, broke the bread, gave it to his disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is my body which is given for you.  Do this in remembrance of me."

...I held the bread before the small group gathered together and I broke it.  Before anything else was said.  Before the eucharistic meal was finished.  Before anything else happened, I felt inwardly transformed.  Something happened to me while I was breaking the body of Christ for the benefit of those gathered there that night.

And the question remains for me, "What do you do when 'something happens' to you in the Eucharist."  How do you explain such a transformation?  It wasn't as though I had a mystical experience or some sort of epiphany.  I simply knew that somethingi was different.  Call it real presence, call it a "spiritual experience," call it whatever you like - I prefer to call it a gift.

Often, I approach the Eucharistic meal with a sort of reverence and awe (feigned when I'm tired or when the day hasn't gone as I'd have liked).  Indeed, I approach the table as though I'm approaching the very body and blood of Christ - and for most of my life (even my time among the Southern Baptists) I've managed to believe that the bread and wine actually are the body and blood of Christ.  I've always believed this but never in my life have I felt or believed that my life - my mind, my heart, my sense of who I am as a person, a minister, a husband and a father - was fundamentally changed during the Euchairst.

That is, until now.  It probably sounds crazy - especially to some of my Baptist friends out there - but I believe that, in that moment when I broke the bread and presented to cup to those Christians gathered before me, God issued a calling clearer than I've ever felt before.  I'm called - just as all people are called - to be lifted to God.  I'm called to experience the life of the Triune Mystery in an imperfect community of people with whom I may not otherwise associate.  I'm called to live - as all people are - with the needs of my brothers and sisters in mind.  I'm called to point others to the communion of the Three-In-One God and to live my life - a life of peace, gentleness, humility and failure - in service to all those "Others" for whom such communion is not yet possible.  I am called to be a minister.  And because it could have just as easily been you serving me at the Holy Banquet, You are called to be a minister.

The Church Has No Clothes On!! The Great Disappointment and Me.

So a semi-famous podcaster writes a post about a semi-famous "organization" conversation and gets (gently) beaten about the head and neck (metaphorically, of course) by its nondefenders and then writes a "do-over" post where he sort of apologizes and "sets the record straight."

Blah, blah blah!

I know I'm not a "semi-famous" blogger or what have you but, seriously!?  I read all of these posts with people defending their lifestyle choices, comparing themselves to celebates, arguing about whether they started a revolution and I find myself screaming, "The Emperor has no clothes on!"

What's more, I see the following video and am reminded about how much of Western Christianity (including much of what is called "emerging/emergent" these days) is absolute circus, a self-aggrandizing spiritual experience fair that allows us to talk about ourselves more than would typically be acceptable in any other civilized society and now, for good measure, we can do it in more "creative" ways.



It goes to show how little I know that I was just beginning to get excited about Emergent precisely at the time when the whole thing supposedly fizzled out (or didn't).  Over the past few days I've read all of these posts and comments and I've been getting the feeling that we're all missing something.

-----

I wrote everything above that line last night with no real intentions of publishing this post.  Afterall, who am I?  And, if what I say is true then what's the point of blogging anyway?  It seems that simply by taking time to whine about the supposed death of a conversation I'd be one of the ones who's missing something.  Well, that may be true but I woke up this morning and read the following words from Josh Brown:

There is no more subversion. There is no more critique. There is no more prophetic voice. Emerging Church is big church now. And the big boys have pushed the little boys out of the sand box.

Being away from the “conversation” for over a year now and having the unique perspective of looking back in on it, I’m reminded of the little boy from The Matrix. While Neo talks about moving the spoon and bending the spoon, the little boy simply says, “There is no spoon.”
I’m telling you right now there is no spoon. The emerging church is dead because church is dead. The emerging church is irrelevant because church as we are still talking about it in the conversation is irrelevant.

And while I’m no Pete Rollins with his veiled parables, I’ll go one step further, the god of the emerging church is dead. In it’s place is neither agnosticism nor atheism nor theism. In it’s place is a space for a spoon that does not exist.

I wonder if Josh is right?  I've had a bit of a strange relationship with Emergent/Emerging.  I'm one of the "little guys" (heck, I'm only 25) and what's more, I've never really been a conversation partner.  Since I was 18, I've been serving in so-called "traditional" churches and, thus, when I became aware of the emerging conversation, I was decidedly late to the game.  My enthusiasm has waxed and waned over the years but recently - through conversations with friends (how ironic) - I've been experiencing new hope and new excitement over the ways that all the various "emergent" tribes (see a few of them under the links on the sidebar) are trying to live out "church" in new ways.

Meanwhile, I continue to serve in a very traditional church with people that I love.  I continue to see that there's so much wrong with the ways that we think about Christianity and the ways that we live it try to live it.  I've never taken the plunge out of church altogether, although I've flirted with the idea.  Something in me continues to be tied - even bound - to the idea that God can and will work anywhere.  I see these videos and I read these posts and I just wonder how much of it is smoke and mirrors - and I feel like maybe I'm tied to a sinking ship.

Maybe Josh Brown is right - maybe church as we know it in any institutional form other than the "institution" of family and friendship is dead.  And all of this is terribly ironic because I'm preaching this Sunday on the Trinity - on community and relationship, on justice and peace.  I'm preaching this in a very traditional church and I'm pretty sure I know what will happen.  The people will listen, they'll either like or hate what I've got to say, and then they'll all file out of the building we call the church and say, "nice job, preacher."  And I'll be screaming inside, "the emperor church has no clothes on!"

We walk the same old walk with new "clothes" (and mabye an iPhone) and we hold our heads high and there are people in places like China and Malaysia who cannot live as Christians without being persecuted or, in some cases, killed!  Our "conversations" - be they emerging, missional, incarnational or whatever else are an insult to the body of Christ in places where to even call oneself a Christian (without all the abstract, self aggrandizing monikers) is to risk imprisonment, torture or death.  Shame on us!  We talk about things like "social justice" and "incarnational living" and what we really mean is "thrift store mid-century modern furniture instead of pews" and "let's sing some 'secular' songs in worship."  I was beginning to be excited that emerging/emergent would present something new - and, honestly, I still have hope sometimes.  But right now, I'm not so sure.  I hope for new life but I see so much of the old life still hanging on.

Leonardo Boff - "God the Family"

"The ultimate principle of the world and of history is not a solitary being...but God the Family - God-Communion.  From all eternity, Yahweh is a bond of loving relations, an unfathomable Mystery - the unoriginated Origin of all - called "Father."  This Mother and Father emerges from the depths of divine mystery in an act of self-communication and self-revelation within the Godhead itself, and this emergence is the second person of God: "God the Son."  Now Parent and Child - "Father and Son" - join in an embrace of love and in so doing express and give origin to the Holy Spirit, who is the Oneness of the first and second persons.  This Trinity has not remained enclosed but has communicated itself, making human life its temple.  The Trinity dwells in our history, divinizing each of us" (Quoted in Stanley Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God, p. 120).

Where is the library at?

I was going to write the second part of my review of Ian Mobsby's book, Th Becoming of G-d but I decided to drink Earl Gray and hang out with my wife instead!  I chose the greater good.

In the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy an old joke I once heard about Stanley Hauerwas (which is really a very old joke that isn't really about Stanley Hauerwas but is still funny):

A theologian from Texas once presented at a conference at [insert "elitist" university name here].  Having trouble finding his location, he stops a passerby and asks, "Could you tell me where the library's at?"  The passerby blusters and replies, "at [insert "elitist" university name here] we do not end sentences with prepositions.  The Texan replies, "I'm terribly sorry.  I meant to say, 'Could you tell me where the library's at asshole?'"

Grace, peace and goodly profanity,

A.T.

Bonaventure on The Trinity and Creation + the rest of my review of The Becoming of G-d by Ian Mobsby

So I've got a thing for the Trinity these days - which is appropriate given that I'm giving the pastoral reflection on Trinity Sunday @ the church where I serve as a youth minister.  I ran across this wonderful little tidbit from Bonaventure in Denys Turner's book, The Darkness of God:

...the creation of the world is a kind of book in which the Trinity, the world's maker, shines forth, is represented and read in three modes of expression, namely the modes of vestige, image and likeness: thus the meaning of vestige is found in all creatures, of image in intellectual or rational spirits only, of likeness in those alone who are godlike; and from these human understanding is destined to ascend step by step to the highest Principle, God, as if up a kind of ladder.

In my little "love affair" with Trinitarian theology, I've been drawn also to apophatic or negative theology, process / panentheistic thought (in Philip Clayton and Paul Fiddes), and mysticism.  I'm beginning to think that Western Christianity needs a good dose of each of these (although I'm still not always sure what to make of the more heady "Whiteheadean" process stuff).

That being said, expect a clearer focus in the coming days on each of these subjects - especially in my next post where I will continue my reflections / thoughts on Ian Mobsby's book, The Becoming of G-d.

Grace & peace,

A.T.

Paul Fiddes on Living the Trinity

Given my recent interest in the Trinitarian shape of the church - as provoked by Ian Mobsby's book, The Becoming of G-d, I was thrilled to run across these passages by Paul Fiddes on participating in the life of God:

We dwell and dance in triune spaces. The room that God makes for us within God’s own self is not a widening of the gap between individual subjects, but the opening up of intervals within the interweaving movements of giving and receiving...

...The comprehensiveness of Christ as incarnate wisdom consists therefore in his relationship as Son to Father. This relationship in which Christ participates within the communion of God’s life comprehends the infinite aspects of all relations of giving and receiving in God. The filial relationship of this particular human son [Christ] to God exactly corresponds to the movement of relationship within God which is like that between a son and a father; thus, in Christ, human sonship is the same as divine sonship not only in function but in being, since relations in God are more being-full than anything else. This means that the pattern of son-to-father relationship made visible in the life, death and resurrection of Christ becomes the key to our own participation in God. It is this flow of relationship upon which we are dependent and must engage in the complex and inexhaustible communion of God’s life...