Tag: Youth
1 Who is HEWHOMUSTNOTBENAMED@gmail.com?
As some of you may know, HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED is the moniker I sometimes use in sermons to protect the anonymity of a certain short-red-faced-bushy-eyebrowed-falls- asleep- before -the- doxology-generous- with- his- money- and- his- criticisms- parishioner (bless his heart).
Hilariously, now, one of YOU has taken this mantle and taken to emailing me cryptic, quasi-threatening emails from- yup- hewhomustnotbenamed@gmail.com
Here is an example:
Rev. Micheli,
1 My Plea to Churches: Take Down Your Lame Signs
Every day, two freaking times a day, I have to drive by one of those church signs with the individual letters you can move around like magnet poetry to create- supposedly- witty, catchy, thought-provoking, chicken-soup-for-the-vanilla-soul kind of messages. And on swim practice days, its 4x/day.
You’ve seen the ones.
‘Christianity: Some Assembly Required’
‘Life is fragile, handle with prayer.’
‘1 Cross + 3 Nails = 4Given’
‘America bless God’
‘One in the hand is worth two in the…just kidding.
Call me cynical (if you haven’t already) but I hate these signs. I’m sure some of you love them and think I’m cold and callous, but I think they’re lame.
My problem isn’t that these don’t communicate.
My problem is that I fear they communicate very well.
They say to anyone who’s never wanted to go to church before: ‘Stay away. We’re exactly what you thought we were.’
They say:
We’re not going to challenge you.
Our religion is the sentimental kind that will have about zero application to your life.
You don’t need to be here because the paradoxical message of Christ can be summarized in this lame Christian koan.
And this isn’t just me being cranky. In the book, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church, David Kinnaman notes that one of the most frequent reasons cited by young people is their impression that the Church is shallow.
So you see churches with lame signs only appeal to people inside churches not to the people who’ll be driving past your church come Sunday morning off to some other way to spend their time. Meanwhile, your sign conforms to all the impressions out there that Church isn’t a place of depth, unexpectedness or adventure.
Thus my plea…take down your lame sign.
And then there’s this sign, which has even more depressing suggestions of lameness (I mean…how did NO ONE in that church think that might be a double entendre).
2 Why We Should Stop Baptizing Children and Babies
A sermon for All Saints based on Ezra 3
On Thursday afternoon this week, I found myself in what you might describe as a ‘sour mood.’ Or, as my wife likes to put it, I was ‘man-strating.’
First, early on Thursday I received an email from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named here in the congregation, my own personal Caiphus. For some reason, he felt the need to email me to dispute Dennis’ sermon from last Sunday.
You know, the sermon that was written by and preached by NOT ME. I mean if I’m going to start getting blamed for Dennis’ sermons too then he’s got to step up his game. Specifically, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named wanted to dismiss the Pew Trust statistics Dennis shared with you, about the percentage of people in their 40’s and 30’s and 20’s for whom church is not relevant to their lives at all.
His email was succinct: “I come to church every Sunday. If other people don’t that’s not my problem.”
That’s when I started manstrating.
Right after reading his email, I got in my car where I discovered that every single radio station was playing a campaign commercial, the kind explaining how this Tuesday is the most critical date in the history of human civilization and unless Barack Obama/Mitt Romney wins the earth will stop spinning, America will cease to exist, and the Death Star will reach full operational capacity.
Driving in my car, my mood worsened.
When I got home Thursday afternoon, my phone rang. And rang. And rang…don’t you love phone calls this time of year? Barack Obama’s campaign called me 3 times, asking for my vote and my money. Mitt Romney’s campaign called me 2 times, asking for my vote and my money. George Allen and Tim Kaine followed with robo-calls of their own, asking for my vote and my money.
So when my phone rang for the 8th time, I was full-on manstrating.
‘Is Jason Micheli there?’ the voice on the other end inquired.
‘No, he’s not here,’ I lied, ‘can I take a message?’
‘My name’s Matt. I’m calling from Princeton Seminary.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘this is Jason.’
‘But I thought you said…’
‘Never mind what I said. How can I help you?’
He then explained that he was a seminary student and that he was calling on behalf of the Bicentennial Campaign, soliciting gifts…and testimonials from alumni.
He tried to grease the sale by telling me all the new things going on at my alma mater, and then he asked if I would make a gift to the campaign.
I said sure. He said great. I said okay. He asked how much. I told him.
And he said: ‘Times are tough, huh?’
That’s when my mood turned truly foul.
‘Look kid, maybe no one’s told you yet what you can expect to make as a pastor but I’m not Bill Gates. Besides, you should’ve called earlier. I’ve already given money to Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, George Allen, Tim Kaine, NPR and the Rebel Alliance.’
He sounded confused.
‘Well, um, would you like to share any thoughts about how your seminary education prepared you for ministry? We’d like to compile these and publish them in the alumni magazine.’
And instantly my mind went to that email from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, sitting in my inbox, still waiting for a reply.
And I knew this was one of those moments where a grown-up could choose to bite his tongue and not resort to petty sarcasm. But I’m not one of those grown-ups.
‘Sure, Matt, I’d love to share my thoughts. Here goes: Princeton Seminary prepared me exceedingly well…to maintain a church for church people.’
I could hear him typing my response.
‘In fact, Matt, why don’t you suggest to the trustees that they can slow down, delay the Bicentennial for several decades, because based on how Princeton taught me to do ministry it must still be 1950.’
‘That’s not the kind of feedback we were looking for’ Matt said.
‘Of course not, but its what you need to hear.
Princeton Seminary taught me to pray the kinds of prayers church people like, to preach the kinds of sermons church people like, to plan the kind worship services that church people like, to manage the kind of church that church people like.
But seminary didn’t teach me how to do any of those things in a way that makes church relevant and life-changing to an unchurched person.
And that’s the future, Matt. And the clock’s ticking. It’s ticking faster than any one in church wants to believe.’
Those Pew statistics Dennis shared with you last week- about how with each new generation the church plays an ever-shrinking role- those aren’t just numbers.
They’re people with names and stories. People God loves.
That’s why this week I sent our youth director, Teer Hardy, out into Alexandria and DC, to find some those people behind the numbers and hear their side of the story.
I wish I could show you the video he shot. If we were in the National Cathedral, I could show you the video. But since we’re in this sanctuary, you’re just going to have to listen. Here’s one of the responses (Cue Audio)
My name is ___________________.
I’m 33. I’m married and have a 1 year old boy. I work full-time.
As a 30-something, how relevant is the Church to you in your life?
At this moment, not very much. I guess it’s been almost five years since I worshipped in a church, besides a few weddings. Some of my earliest memories are of going to church during Advent.
I miss that element in my weekly life, of worshiping and belonging to a community. Part of me would like to have that resonance of faith in my daily life, but most churches don’t seem to have someone like me, someone my age, in mind. Your question could easily be turned around, couldn’t it? How relevant is someone like me to your church?
When you hear the word ‘worship’ what comes to your mind?
The word ‘worship’ doesn’t immediately lead me to think of institutional religious practices.
To worship, to me, is to reframe my attention away from everything I typically pay attention to as a full-time working mother, and turn to God, experience awe, gratitude, connection to other humans. I could attend a formal church service and never experience any of those things, but I do experience them in other ways and places.
What assumptions or habits do churches have that are an obstacle to someone your age?
I think there is a risk of the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction. I think churches sometimes try to pander and make themselves appear relevant to a young audience. People my age and younger are a lot savvier now. We’re marketed to all the time; we can tell the difference between a sales pitch and a genuine interest in us.
This is someone who grew up in church and is open to being a part of another one.
But did you hear what she said?
People like her won’t return to what they left if it’s the same exact thing they left before.
Now it’s easy to write people like her off. You can say ‘it’s not my problem.’
I could steer you towards plenty of people who would agree with you.
You know where they’re all at this morning? That’s right, in dying churches.
And Methodism’s got plenty of those. Churches who love their way of doing things more than they love their mission to reach new people.
Churches where perpetuating how they do things is their mission. Churches who feel no urgency until the day comes they can no longer pay the bills.
But, just in case there’s still some of you who want to dismiss the statistics and not be bothered about the strangers in the street who don’t think Jesus can change their lives, we solicited some other interviews too.
Cue Audio:
My name’s _____________________. I’m 24 and work full-time.
What about how churches do worship fails to resonate with you?
I think everyone is at a different place in their lives and everyone has a different perspective. I know that my ideas and opinions about things have changed, and I would be amazed if they didn’t change again. Sometimes it feels like churches want new and younger people so long as we don’t come with our own opinions and needs. We’re expected to sign on to exactly how they like to do worship. In that sense, it’s not much different than children’s church when I was a kid.
It’s difficult for me to accept someone else’s preferences if I don’t get the feeling that they’re open to someone else’s way of doing things too.
This other response come to me by way of Facebook:
My name’s ____________________. I’m a Graduate Student.
I think my faith is in a transitional phase. In college, I found Christian groups to be radical and extreme and it made me doubt the beliefs I had learned my whole life in church and youth group. It left me feeling that the Church just isn’t all that relevant to real life.
Worship sometimes feels like a passive ritual to me. You show up, listen, then go home. It doesn’t impact my day to day life.
Those two people. Guess where they came from?
They grew up here at Aldersgate. They’re ours. Yours.
So, even if you think we don’t have a responsibility to reach as many new people as we can, at the very least you should agree that we have an obligation to people like these two.
After all, you’ve made promises to them.
Remember? When they were baptized- you promised to do whatever it takes to nurture their faith.
If we’re not willing to create the kind of church that will be relevant to them when they grow up, then, frankly, we should stop baptizing them when they’re babies.
If we’re not willing to adapt how we do church, we should stop baptizing children.
Because every time we baptize, we vow to do everything it takes to make them a saint.
Shirley Pitts can tell you- John Wesley understood this.
Remembering the saints is something we do. Once a year.
Producing saints, Sunday after Sunday, day in and day out- that’s our Christ-given great commission.
This is what you need to remember.
Dennis and I- one of our three goals for the coming 18 months is to raise the number of people in worship by 10%.
Round it up to 100 people if you want.
Before you nod your heads and say ‘that’s a great idea!’ remember the Ezra chapter 3 catch:
We can’t say we’re going to build a new temple and think we can do so by replicating how we’ve always done things before.
Because how we do things now will net us what we have.
Now.
We’re making worship our number one focus this year and our goal is 10% more people worshipping God with us.
To get to that goal, we’re going to have to be creative, take risks, value people over preferences, we’re going to have to examine all our assumptions, we’re going to have to get more basic/more essential, and change.
And if you think I’m talking about worship style or music style, you’re missing the point. For example:
Most of you would be very reluctant to invite an unchurched friend to worship with you. I understand that reluctance, but it’s got to change.
Many of you can’t talk about Jesus or use religious language in a normal conversation with your peers. I was like that; I understand that, and we’ve got to change that.
Many of our members are involved in all kinds of activities in the church without ever worshipping with us. I understand that’s an ingrained part of the church culture, but it’s a part of the culture that’s got to change.
Other than acolytes, we don’t have our children or youth involved in worship, serving communion, reading scripture, helping to plan, leading prayer or ushering. I understand that might sound chaotic. It’s still gotta change.
Many of you don’t know the names of the people you sit near in church every Sunday. I DON’T understand that and it’s definitely got to change.
Many of you think worship is something Dennis or I or Andreas or Jason or the band or the choir offer you, and you receive- rather than something we collectively offer our larger community on behalf of God.
And more than anything, that mindset has to change.
Look, I know change bothers people.
I’ve been at this long enough to have habits I’m afraid to change.
I understand.
But what I want to bother you more, what I wish I got emails complaining about, what I wish I got emails complaining about, is how our community is filled with lost coins, lost sheep, lost children and how we’re not laser-beam focused on getting them here so they can embrace a Father who’s waiting for them.
I want that to bother you because Jesus made it very clear: it bothers God.
I was still on the phone with Matt from Princeton when another call beeped in.
It was probably another campaign calling me for my vote and my money.
But at least it snapped me out of my rant and Matt said:
‘That’s a good point Mr Micheli, but transitioning a church into the future- don’t you think that’s your congregation’s responsibility too? Don’t you trust that God can equip your people with the necessary gifts?’
I told him he must get very good grades in seminary, and he chuckled gently.
And then the little jerk asked me for more money.
But he was right.
Building on our foundation for a new future is a gigantic, God-sized calling. And it belongs to all of us. Together.
Ezra says the leaders who build the new Temple after the exile are the grandkids of the ones who remember how things used to be.
Ezra says, at first, everyone thinks their idea to build a new Temple is a great idea.
But Ezra says some have a change of heart when they realize the new Temple won’t be the same as the old.
Some refuse to give their money to it, Ezra says.
Others opt out Ezra says.
But others, those who are old enough to remember what was 50 years ago, Ezra says they weep.
They weep, but they’re still there. They’re still there when the new Temple is dedicated. They’re still committed. They’re still contributing. Because of what God did for them in the past, they’re still invested in the future of what God’s doing.
And sure when the new Temple is dedicated, Ezra says you can’t distinguish the sound of celebration from the sound of grief.
But that’s okay.
Because as messy as it is, that’s what it sounds like- celebration and grief, that’s what it sounds like- when God’s People take the next faithful step.
1 The Gay Debate: The Bible and Homosexuality
What does scripture say about homosexuality?
Does scripture condemn loving, monogamous gay relationships? Does it? Are you sure?
The NY Times ran a story on Sunday about Matthew Vines a young gay Christian whose lifelong church, and many lifelong friends, couldn’t abide his sexuality nor his insistence that he was still in the parameters of scripture.
I’ve written here before that Christians of good will can and do disagree over this issue, but here’s what I have no patience for: Christians- on either side- who make their arguments and pronouncements pro or con but have no actual knowledge of what scripture says. I hear a lot of ‘the bible teaches…’ by people who don’t seem to really know what in fact the bible teaches.
And that’s what I admire about Matthew Vines’ story. Rejected by his church and many friends, he’s responded A) not in anger or despair and B) not by giving up on the faith. Instead he’s taken on a teaching mission to unpack just what scripture says on these thorny issues. Disagree with him if you like; however, his drive and zeal to be counted among God’s People is to be admired.
Here’s the story. And just below is Matthew’s presentation on You Tube. It’s worth a full watch.
0 Young People Hate: Homophobic Christianity
Tony Jones has a post today reviewing the beginning of the Democratic National Convention and celebrating how the Democratic Party appears to have transitioned to full-throated support of homosexual relationships and marriage equality. It’s received little comment in the media- maybe because the media arrived at such support long ago?- but such support seemed unthinkable just a few cycles ago.
Tony concludes with this thought: This is just another sign that the tipping point has been reached. And it is yet again up to congregations and denominations and plain old Christians to decide whether they want to be on the right side or the wrong side of history.
Now I know a lot of you have a lot of different feelings when it comes same-sex relationships. I realize how sincere Christians can arrive at two very divergent points of view on the question. Christians can debate the question from a variety of scriptural and theological perspectives; indeed, Christians have been doing just that (to the overall detriment of the Church) for decades. The issue threatens Church unity in my denomination (Methodism) and has torn several other denominations asunder.
Pushing the scriptural and theological concerns aside for just one moment, on one level Tony’s point is absolutely rock-solid: demographics.
No matter the supposed scriptural or theological ‘correctness’ of those who oppose same-sex relationships, long-term it’s a losing issue for the Church.
I’ll put it stronger, long-term the Church has an image problem when it comes to how we deal with the gay issue.
Why? Because, like it or not, young people think Christians are homophobic and, overwhelmingly, young people do not share that phobia.
In his book, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving the Church, David Kinnaman cites the perceived intolerance of Christians as one of the primary reasons those in their teens and twenties leave the faith.
It’s a generational difference. Kinnaman points out how in 1960 9 of 10 young adults identified themselves as Christian. Today it’s 60%. In 1960 only 1 of every 20 births was to an unwed mother. Today it’s nearly 50%.
Young people today have grown up with a diversity (religious, ethnic, relational) unthinkable 50 years ago. Diversity is an assumed norm in their lives and they bring it to bear on the topic of homosexuality. Young people favor egalitarianism in their relationships: fairness over rightness, inclusion over exclusion, relationships over opinions and, as a result, young people simply assume the participation of homosexuals in any meaningful cultural conversation.
And there’s the demographic rub. An institution that behaves as though it values the polar opposite, the Church, seems strange, antiquated and even mean-spirited to a majority of young people.
I’m not suggesting that churches should capitulate to the cultural mores of the empire. Neither am I suggesting churches should abandon teachings they sincerely believe are given by the Holy Spirit.
I am suggesting that the demographics make it even more imperative Christians engage this conversation gently and with compassion, as though all the eyes of young people are watching.
I am suggesting that the demographic realities force Christians to consider whether being ‘right’ on this issue is more important than persuading others to the love of Christ. Or, as Tony puts it again: This is just another sign that the tipping point has been reached. And it is yet again up to congregations and denominations and plain old Christians to decide whether they want to be on the right side or the wrong side of history.
2 A Letter to Young Christians on their Way to College
Many friends are in the midst of resuming or beginning their college and graduate schools. And many of their parents are suffering a mixture of joy and sadness.
Too often we in the church have a sort of empty nest mentality about our youth who leave for school, thinking that our job- like their parents’- is to get them to graduation. We neglect our calling if we no longer attempt to shape and minster to students after they’ve left for study. What’s more, we do students a profound disservice if fail to convey to them how their study is but the next step in their Christian calling. To learn and glean wisdom from those who’ve come before could not be a more Christian discipline.
Here’s a letter from First Things by one of my intellectual heroes, Stanley Hauerwas. For the last couple of years, I’ve copied it and mailed to some students with whom I’m close. I think it’s a wise piece that any student, or even their parents, could appreciate.
“The Christian religion,” wrote Robert Louis Wilken, “is inescapably ritualistic (one is received into the Church by a solemn washing with water), uncompromisingly moral (‘be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,’ said Jesus), and unapologetically intellectual (be ready to give a ‘reason for the hope that is in you,’ in the words of 1 Peter). Like all the major religions of the world, Christianity is more than a set of devotional practices and a moral code: it is also a way of thinking about God, about human beings, about the world and history.”
Ritualistic, moral, and intellectual: May these words, ones that Wilken uses to begin his beautiful book, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, be written on your soul as you begin college and mark your life—characterize and distinguish your life—for the next four years. Be faithful in worship. In America, going to college is one of those heavily mythologized events that everybody tells you will “change your life,” which is probably at least half true. So don’t be foolish and imagine that you can take a vacation from church.
Be uncompromisingly moral. Undergraduate life on college campuses tends in the direction of neopagan excess. Good kids from good families too often end up using their four years at college to get drunk and throw up on one another. Too often they do so on their way to the condom dispensers. What a waste! Not only because such behavior is self-destructive but also because living this way will prevent you from doing the intellectual work the Christian faith demands. Be deeply intellectual. We—that is, the Church—need you to do well in school. That may sound strange, because many who represent Christian values seem concerned primarily with how you conduct yourself while you are in college; they relegate the Christian part of being in college to what is done outside the classroom.
The Christian fact is very straightforward: To be a student is a calling. Your parents are setting up accounts to pay the bills, or you are scraping together your own resources and taking out loans, or a scholarship is making college possible. Whatever the practical source, the end result is the same. You are privileged to enter a time—four years!—during which your main job is to listen to lectures, attend seminars, go to labs, and read books.
It is an extraordinary gift. In a world of deep injustice and violence, a people exists that thinks some can be given time to study. We need you to take seriously the calling that is yours by virtue of going to college. You may well be thinking, “What ishe thinking? I’m just beginning my freshman year. I’m not being called to be a student. None of my peers thinks he or she is called to be a student. They’re going to college because it prepares you for life. I’m going to college so I can get a better job and have a better life than I’d have if I didn’t go to college. It’s not a calling.”
But you are a Christian. This means you cannot go to college just to get a better job. These days, people talk about college as an investment because they think of education as a bank account: You deposit the knowledge and expertise you’ve earned, and when it comes time to get a job, you make a withdrawal, putting all that stuff on a résumé and making money off the investment of your four years. Christians need jobs just like anybody else, but the years you spend as an undergraduate are like everything else in your life. They’re not yours to do with as you please. They’re Christ’s.
Christ’s call on you as a student is a calling to meet the needs of the Church, both for its own life and the life of the world. The Resurrection of Jesus, Wilken suggests, is not only the central fact of Christian worship but also the ground of all Christian thinking “about God, about human beings, about the world and history.” Somebody needs to do that thinking—and that means you.
Don’t underestimate how much the Church needs your mind. Remember your Bible-study class? Christians read Isaiah’s prophecy of a suffering servant as pointing to Christ. That seems obvious, but it’s not; or at least it wasn’t obvious to the Ethiopian eunuch to whom the Lord sent Philip to explain things. Christ is written everywhere, not only in the prophecies of the Old Testament but also in the pages of history and in the book of nature. The Church has been explaining, interpreting, and illuminating ever since it began. It takes an educated mind to do the Church’s work of thinking about and interpreting the world in light of Christ. Physics, sociology, French literary theory: All these and more—in fact, everything you study in college—is bathed in the light of Christ. It takes the eyes of faith to see that light, and it takes an educated mind to understand and articulate it.
There’s another dimension to the call of intellectual work. In the First Letter of Peter we read, “Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (3:15). Not everybody believes. In fact, the contemporary American secular university is largely a place of unbelief. Thus, the Church has a job to do: to explain why belief in the risen Lord actually makes sense. There’s no one formula, no one argument, so don’t imagine you will find the magic defense against all objections. You can, however, offer the reasonable defense Peter asks for. You may at least make someone think twice before he rejects the risen Lord.
Anyway, defense isn’t the point. Lots of people feel lost because they imagine being a sophisticated, contemporary intellectual makes faith impossible. The Church wants to reach these people, but to do so requires an ambassador at home in the intellectual world. That’s you—or at least that’s what you can become if you do your work with enthusiasm. Share in a love of learning. It’s a worthy love in its own right, and it will allow you to be the leaven in the lump of academia.
So, yes, to be a student is to be called to serve the Church and the world. But always remember who serves what. Colleges focus on learning; as they do so, they can create the illusion that being smart and well educated is the be-all and end-all of life. You do not need to be educated to be a Christian. That’s obvious. After all, Christ is most visible to the world in the person who responds to his call of “Come, follow me.” I daresay St. Francis of Assisi was more important to the medieval Church than any intellectual. One of the most brilliant men in the history of the Church, St. Bonaventure, a Franciscan, said as much. But the Church needs some Christians to be educated, as St. Bonaventure also knew; this is why he taught at the University of Paris and ensured that, in their enthusiasm for the example of St. Francis, his brother Franciscans didn’t give up on education.
The best way to think about the relation between your calling as a student and the many other callings of Christians can be found in 1 Corinthians 12. In this letter Paul is dealing with a community in turmoil as various factions claim priority. It’s the same situation today. Pastors consider preaching and evangelizing the most important thing. Teachers consider education the most important thing. Social activists argue for the priority of making the world more just. Still others insist that internal spiritual renewal is the key to everything. St. Paul, however, reminds the Church at Corinth that it comprises a variety of gifts that serve to build up the Church’s common good. To one person is given wisdom, to others knowledge, to still others the work of healing, prophecy, and the discernment of the spirits. By all means honor those who are serving the Church in the ordained ministry, or through social action, or through spiritual direction. But remember: You are about to become a student—not a pastor, a social worker, or a spiritual director. Whatever you end up doing with your life, now is the time when you develop the intellectual skills the Church needs for the sake of building up the Body of Christ.
Your Christian calling as a student does not require you to become a theologian, at least not in the official sense of the word. Speaking as one whose job title is Professor of Theology, I certainly hope you will be attracted to the work of theology. These days—at least in the West, where the dominant intellectual trends have detached themselves from Christianity—the discipline of theology is in a world of hurt, often tempted by silly efforts to dress up the gospel in the latest academic fashions. So God knows we need all the help we can get.
But there is a wider sense of being a theologian, one that simply means thinking about what you are learning in light of Christ. This does not happen by making everything fit into Church doctrine or biblical preaching—that’s theology in the strict, official sense. Instead, to become a Christian scholar is more a matter of intention and desire, of bearing witness to Christ in the contemporary world of science, literature, and so forth.
You can’t do this on your own. You’ll need friends who major in physics and biology as well as in economics, psychology, philosophy, literature, and every other discipline. These friends can be teachers and fellow students, of course, but, for the most part, our intellectual friendships are channeled through books. C.S. Lewis has remained popular with Christian students for many good reasons, not the least of which is that he makes himself available to his readers as a trusted friend in Christ. That’s true for many other authors too. Get to know them.
Books, moreover, are often the way in which our friendships with our fellow students and teachers begin and in which these friendships become cemented. I’m not a big fan of Francis Schaeffer, but he can be a point of contact—something to agree with or argue about. The same is true for all writers who tackle big questions. Read Plato, Aristotle, Hume, and John Stuart Mill, and not just because you might learn something. Read them because doing so will provide a sharpness and depth to your conversations. To a great extent, becoming an educated person means adding lots of layers to your relationships. Sure, going to the big football game or having a beer (legally) with your buddies should be fun on its own terms, but it’s also a reality ripe for analysis, discussion, and conversation. If you read Mary Douglas or Claude Levi-Strauss, you’ll have something to say about the rituals of American sports. And if you read Jane Austen or T.S. Eliot, you’ll find you see conversations with friends, particularly while sharing a meal, in new ways. And, of course, you cannot read enough Trollope. Think of books as the fine threads of a spider’s web. They link and connect.
This is especially true for your relationships with your teachers. You are not likely to become buddies with your teachers. They tend to be intimidating. But you can become intellectual friends, and this will most likely happen if you’ve read some of the same books. This is even true for science professors. You’re unlikely to engage a physics professor in an interesting conversation about subatomic particles. As a freshman you don’t know enough. But read C.P. Snow’s book The Two Cultures, and I’ll bet your physics teacher will want to know what you’re thinking. Books are touchstones, common points of reference. They are the water in which our minds swim.
You cannot and should not try to avoid being identified as an intellectual. I confess I am not altogether happy with the word intellectual as a descriptor for those who are committed to the work of the university. The word is often associated with people who betray a kind of self-indulgence, an air that they do not need to justify why they do what they do. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake is the dogma used to justify such an understanding of what it means to be an intellectual. But if you’re clear about your calling as a student, you can avoid this temptation. You are called to the life of the mind to be of service to the gospel and the Church. Don’t resist this call just because others are misusing it.
Fulfilling your calling as a Christian student won’t be easy. It’s not easy for anyone who is serious about the intellectual life, Christian or not. The curricula of many colleges and universities may seem, and in fact may be, chaotic. Many schools have no particular expectations. You check a few general-education boxes—a writing course, perhaps, and some general distributional requirements—and then do as you please. Moreover, there is no guarantee that you will be encouraged to read. Some classes, even in the humanities, are based on textbooks that chop up classic texts into little snippets. You cannot become friends with an author by reading half a dozen pages. Finally, and perhaps worse because insidious, there is a strange anti-intellectualism abroad in academia. Some professors have convinced themselves that all knowledge is just political power dressed up in fancy language, or that books and ideas are simply ideological weapons in the quest for domination. Christians, of all people, should recognize that what is known and how it is known produce and reproduce power relations that are unjust, but this does not mean all questions of truth must be abandoned. As I said, it won’t be easy.
You owe it to yourself and to the Church not to let the incoherence, laziness, and self-critical excesses of the contemporary university demoralize you. Be sure not to let these failures become an excuse for you to avoid an education—a Christian education. Although some universities make it quite easy to avoid being well educated, I think you will find that every university or college has teachers who deserve the titles they’ve been given. Your task is to find them.
But how can you find the best teachers? There are no set principles, but I can suggest some guidelines. First, ask around. Are there professors who have reputations as intellectual mentors of Christian students? You’re eighteen. You don’t need substitute parents—or, at least, you don’t need parents who think you are still twelve. But you do need reliable guides. So rearrange your schedule to take the professor who teaches Dante with sensitivity to the profound theological vision of that great poet. You may end up disagreeing, both with the professor and with Dante, but you’ll learn how to think as a Christian.
Also, go to the bookstore at the beginning of the term to see which professors assign books—and I mean real books, not textbooks. Textbooks can play a legitimate role in some disciplines, but not in all, and never at all levels. You want to find the teachers who have intellectual friends, as it were, and who want to share those friends with their students. If a professor has a course outline that gives two or three weeks to reading St. Augustine’s Confessions, you can reasonably hope that he thinks of St. Augustine as someone he knows (or wants to know) and as someone he wants to share with students.
The best teachers for a Christian student aren’t always Christians. In fact, a certain kind of Christian teacher can lead you astray. It’s not easy to see the truth of Christ in modern science or contemporary critical theory, for example. The temptation is to compartmentalize, to assign your faith to the heart, perhaps, and then carry on with your academic work. Some professors have become very comfortable with this compartmentalization, so be careful. By all means take spiritual encouragement wherever you can get it; these sorts of professors can be helpful in that regard. But don’t compartmentalize, because that’s basically putting your Christian faith outside of your work as a student.
Your calling is to be a Christian student. The Christian part and the student part are inseparable. It will be hard and frustrating because you won’t see how the two go together. Nobody does, at least not in the sense of having worked it all out. But you need to remember what Christ said: “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” However uncertain we are about how, we know that being a Christian goes with being a student (and a teacher).
Although many professors are not Christians (at some schools, most aren’t), many professors have a piety especially relevant to the academic life. One, for example, might be committed to the intrinsic importance of knowing Wordsworth’s poetry, while another works at getting the chemistry experiment right. These professors convey a spirit of devotion. Their intellectual lives serve the subject matter rather than treating it as information to be mastered or, worse, a dead body of knowledge to be conveyed to students. English literature and modern science do not exist for their own sakes, and the university doesn’t raise money for the sake of professors’ careers. For these professors, the educational system exists for the sake of their disciplines, which they willingly serve. This spirit of devotion is not the same as Christian faith, but it can help shape your young intellectual desires and impulses in the right way by reminding you that your job as a student is to serve and not to be served. College isn’t for you; it’s for your Christian calling as an intellectual.
Eventually, you will no longer be a freshman, and American undergraduate education will force you to begin to specialize. This will present dangers as well as opportunities. You will be tempted to choose a major that will give you a sense of coherence. But be careful your major does not narrow you in the wrong way. It’s true, for example, that modern psychology provides powerful insights into the human condition, but don’t allow your increasing expertise to lure you into illusions of mastery. Continue reading broadly. It may seem that the more you know about less and less, the smarter you’ve become; after all, you now know so much more about psychology! But, in truth, the more you know about less and less should teach you humility. After a couple of years spent taking advanced courses in modern European history, you’ll know more about the French Revolution, but, if you’re self-reflective, you’ll also know how much work it takes to know anything well. And there’s so much more to know about reality than modern European history.
To combat a tendency toward the complacency that comes from mastering a discipline, it is particularly important that you gain historical insight into the practice of your discipline. For example, I have nothing but high regard for those disciplines we group under the somewhat misleading category “the sciences.” Too often, though, students have no idea how and why the scientific fields’ research agendas developed into their current form of practice. To go back and read Isaac Newton can be a bit of a shock, because he interwove his scientific analysis with theological arguments. You shouldn’t take this as a mandate for doing the same thing in the twenty-first century. It should, however, make you realize that modern science has profound metaphysical and theological dimensions that have to be cordoned off, perhaps for good reasons. Or perhaps not. The point is that knowing the history of your discipline will, inevitably, broaden the kinds of questions you ask and force you to read to be an intellectual rather than just a specialist.
It is also important that you not accept as a given the categorizations that dominate the contemporary university. For example, if you read Dante, you probably will do so in the English department. The English department has claimed Dante because it considers the Inferno “literature.” Dante obviously was a poet, and one of the most influential, but he also was a theologian, and we fail to do him justice if we ignore that quite specific theological convictions, some controversial in his own day and in ours as well, were at the center of his life and work. The same can be said for the theology department, which often imagines that a particular form of scholastic and philosophically shaped reflection defines the discipline even as the departmental theologians ignore the mystical traditions as well as the traditions of biblical commentary.
To see the rest of the article click here.
Stanley Hauerwas is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School.
0 Free Falling
Check out Jason G and Andreas’ musical take on Eutychus in Acts 20; it’s set to Tom Petty’s ‘Free Fallin.’ It’s part of our ‘Stories They Never Taught You in Sunday School’ sermon series.
Don’t worry we’ll return to ‘reverent’ music after Labor Day.
2 Boring God
We’re in the midst of a sermon series on ‘Stories They Never Taught You in Sunday School.’ Here’s one from Acts 20.7-12. Paul, apparently, was windy and/or boring.
Some years ago I served as a chaplain at the UVA Hospital. It was a regular 9-5 gig, excepting that once a week I covered the overnight shift.
One of the responsibilities of the overnight chaplain was to supervise the transfer of dead bodies from the hospital’s possession to whichever funeral home the dearly departed’s family had selected.
And so, if paged in the middle of night I’d call down to the morgue:
‘This is the chaplain’s office’ I’d say, when the attendant picked up.
And no matter the employee, the response was always the same:
‘Yeah, chaplain, we’ve got a live one. Need you to pick up.’
I’d trudge down into the bowels of the hospital, and, after gathering the necessary paperwork, the attendant and I would push a body bag, down a long tapioca-colored hallway, to a delivery door, where a funeral home employee would be waiting.
We’d push the body through the doors and then, like a UPS man dropping off your latest purchase from EBay, I’d ask the funeral home person to ‘sign here please’ and then the ‘package’ would be his.
The morgue itself with its walk-in fridge, stainless steel tools hanging along the walls, the tiled floor and rubber mats and the music blasting from a boom box- all together it reminded me of the restaurant kitchen where I’d once worked.
A mental association that turned my stomach.
Compared to the holy moments I spent with people during their deaths, the moments I spent with them afterwards, in the morgue, always struck me as disconcertingly casual.
For example, the first time I went to pick up a body- a farmer who’d died when his tractor rolled over on him- when I arrived at the morgue the attendant, a 40-something mustached man, was watching the Adam Sandler movie, Happy Gilmore, and eating pepperoni pizza.
‘Want some?’ he asked with his mouth full.
‘No thanks.’
Or there was the time when the attendant caught me wrinkling my nose at a decidedly postmortem smell and asked: ‘Wanna know what that smell is?’
‘Not really’ I thought.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is the smell of job security.’
Or, for instance, I’d always associated the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s song, ‘Under the Bridge,’ with my first kiss. But now I associate it with the middle aged lawyer who aspirated while trying to eat a pastrami sandwich on the toilet.
The morgue attendant sang ‘sometimes I feel like my only friend’ as we pushed the former counsel for the defense through the double doors.
Some of the bodies I came to claim were people I’d been with as they died, people whose hands I’d held and whose eyes I closed to this world with my palm.
And so it always felt odd to me to see these same people again as they were zipped into what looked like garment bags by an attendant who oftentimes was snacking on a Spicy Hawaiin Hot Pocket and laughing to David Letterman’s latest Top Ten List.
Sometimes the attendants would want to chat it up about UVA Football.
At other times they’d offer me bits of professional trivia.
‘Did you know,’ an attendant said one night as he zipped up a body, ‘that an adult kidney can fit inside a 7-11 Big Gulp?’
‘No, I didn’t know that’ I said, as I briefly tried to imagine the scenario in which discovery was made.
It was gallows humor. I suppose anything else would’ve made it an impossible job.
As a pastor I’ve been around a lot of dead bodies. It’s never really bothered me. But in the morgue the bodies existed in a kind of limbo without anyone to give them context.
I could handle being around the bodies; what I couldn’t handle was their anonymity.
And I think for that reason I’d always ask the attendant for whatever they could tell me about the person.
So that’s how one winter night, I learned about George.
As George was zipped into a bag I asked the 20-something attendant: So, how did he die?
‘Heart attack’ he said, ‘in his sleep.’
‘I guess that’s the way to go’ I said.
‘Yep, they didn’t know he’d died until the service was over.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘He died in church, fell asleep and had a heart attack. The ushers didn’t
realize he was dead until the organ stopped playing.’
‘Can you imagine that?’ the attendant said. ‘Someone sleeping so hard
through church that he could die and no one would know?’
‘You must not be a United Methodist,’ I said.
‘The paperwork says he died at Mt Pisgah Church- do you know that church?’ he asked me.
But my mind wandered. I thought about…
Jake, who was a member of my church and who every Sunday would fall stone cold asleep about 3 sentences into my sermon and who, after I’d been preaching a while would start to argue with his ex-wife in his sleep.
And so when the morgue attendant asked me about Mt Pisgah Church, even though I’d never heard of it and did not know where it was, nonetheless I replied:
‘Yes, I know that church.’
‘I preach there all the time.’
Evidently, according to St Luke, preachers like me have been boring people to death since the very founding of the Church.
That might not come as a surprise to you, having to listen to Dennis every other week, but why on earth would St. Luke ever openly admit that?
Luke’s supposed to be an evangelist remember.
These stories are meant to convert people to the faith not confirm all their worst assumptions about the faith.
What kind of advertisement is this for the church? Come check out our church; our pastor’s a killer preacher?
The story’s even worse than it appears at first glance.
This is the very first mention in the entire New Testament of a Christian- not a Jewish- Sabbath Service.
In other words, this is Kick-Off Sunday for the history of Christian worship and does St Luke have to report?
That Paul is full of hot air and drones on all day, because he’s on his way to Jerusalem and has to leave in the morning.
And so on Kick-Off Sunday Christian preaching claims its first victim.
It’s an odd story. Why would Luke tell it?
It gets even worse.
Paul’s victim is one of only two ‘young people’ mentioned in the New Testament. There just aren’t a lot of youth in the New Testament.
The first one mentioned is the rich, young ruler that Jesus sends away in tears because the young man doesn’t want to sell all his stuff and give the money to the poor.
The other young person mentioned in scripture is Eutychus, who’s killed by one of Jesus’ preachers.
Eutychus- his name in Greek means ‘Lucky,’ which is ironic since he’s not.
It’s a strange story.
And it’s a strange story for Luke of all people to tell.
Luke’s Book of Acts is filled with hyperbolic stories that cast the church in a flattering, almost heroic, light.
Peter’s sermon convert thousands.
Paul’s conversion is filled with dazzling light and high drama.
The apostles routinely evade evil by just a hair’s breadth.
This mention of a youth named Lucky whom Paul bores to death- it doesn’t jive with the rest of Luke’s book.
So why would Luke even jot it down?
After all, Luke was there when it happened.
Luke’s not simply recording something told to him. Here in chapter 20, Luke switches from 3rd person narration to 1st person plural. He says ‘we.’
He was there. So Luke knows what bad press this is for the church.
There’s every reason not to, so there must be a reason why he does include this story.
What are we to make of this story?
It’s not just an odd story for Luke to tell.
It’s odd the way Luke tells it too.
Luke goes overboard with details up front in the beginning of the story.
He tells you about the time and the bread and the lamps and the young man’s name and the exact floor on which the sanctuary was located.
Luke gives all these details in just a couple of verses but then he just, ho-hum, matter-of-factly mentions that Paul brings Lucky back to life. That’s it.
It’s an odd way to tell a resurrection story.
And it’s odd that we don’t hear from Eutychus at all.
He just goes home to nurse his sore back and bruises.
And everyone else- they get back to worship as though this kind of thing were an every day occurrence.
The attendant matched the toe tag on George’s foot with the name on the transfer papers.
‘So, have you ever put anyone to sleep?’ he asked absent-mindedly.
‘Me? No, I’ve never put anyone to sleep’ I lied.
‘Really?’ he squinted at me.
‘Look,’ I shot back, ‘it’s harder than it looks. It takes hours every day. They can’t all be home runs. Believe me, if I could stage car chases in the sanctuary or take half-naked women into the pulpit with me I would.’
He just laughed.
We were about to push George down the hallway to wait for the hearse, but the attendant looked at his watch and said: ‘We’ve got a few minutes. I’ve got a couple sandwiches if you want to grab a bite. Liverwurst.’
I realize some people might think it revolting to eat pureed liver in the approximate vicinity of several dozen corpses not to mention the many appendages and organs with no body to call home. You’re entitled to opinion.
But since I was a boy I’ve not been able to resist liverwurst.
He handed me a sandwich and I sat down at his desk. He got a paper towel and, as casually as if he were sitting at a picnic table, laid his liver sandwich on George’s chest.
‘So you don’t go to church?’ I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I did as a kid.’
‘Alright,’ I said, ‘you tell me. What could someone like me do to make worship less boring to someone like you?’
He wiped is mouth. ‘I don’t think there’s anything you could do.’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘The problem’s not preachers. The problem’s every one else. They make Christianity seem so dull. Most Christians are as cold and stiff as old George here’ and he patted George’s midsection.
‘Even God must be bored by them.’
It’s not really fair to beat up on preachers for being boring.
It’s too obvious. One of the reasons I became a preacher was so I wouldn’t have to sit out there in the pews and suffer like you.
I don’t know how you do it. In an age of iPhones and iPads and Facebook and PowerPoint and Hulu and IMAX to just sit quietly for 20 minutes and listen? That’s a nearly impossible task.
And I know I can be boring, predictable, prosaic. I can see everything from up here-I’m well aware there’s some of you on whom I have an almost narcotic effect.
But, even still, I’m not sure that I’m the problem.
I mean, I’m only up here preaching for one hour a week.
That leaves 167 hours in the week when you’re the preacher.
167 hours in which you proclaim, in which you announce, in which you communicate to anyone around you and everyone in your lives whether or not this God is interesting enough, captivating enough, compelling enough to give not just an hour of your time but to give your lives to.
This past week I studied surveys, done by the Barna Group, of Christians in their teens and twenties. According to the research, a sizeable majority of young people find Christianity to be boring.
Know why? It’s not because of worship or sermons or songs.
No, a majority of young people think Christianity is boring because faith doesn’t appear to be a relevant, real-life, or every day thing for the adults in their lives.
In other words, the way to make young people more excited about the faith isn’t contemporary music or pyrotechnic sermons or flat screens in the sanctuary. The way to make young people more interested in the faith is for there to be more interesting Christians.
When you think about it, to make this God seem boring is quite a feat.
This God, who shed eternity and took on flesh as a poor Jewish carpenter.
This God, whose teaching is always upside down and unexpected and not as we would like it.
This God, who befriended all the wrong people and offended all the right people until it landed him on a cross.
This God, who swallowed up Death and then handed us the keys to his Kingdom and invited us to give our everything to it.
I mean- you can dismiss this God. You can argue with this God.
You can doubt, or disbelieve or run away from this God.
You can even hate this God if you want.
But for God’s sake don’t make this God seem boring.
And maybe that’s Luke’s point
in telling this story the way he does
so ho-hum, matter-of-fact
about this congregation where no one even blinks at a little thing like
someone being raised from death to life.
Because apparently they’re used to that kind of thing.
Maybe this is Luke’s way of saying that this is how Christianity should be.
Maybe Luke’s saying
that God- the Living God- should be such a part of our lives
not just in here
but out there and everywhere
such a part of our lives
that resurrection is an every day expectation,
Maybe Luke’s saying
that God should be such a part of our each and every day life
that we should just expect for this God
to wake people up
to shake people up
to knock people down
and raise them up to a new way of life.
A church with expectations like that
could survive even a boring preacher.
A preacher with that kind of church
would be lucky.
0 What am I Supposed to Do with My Life?
Dr. Robert Dykstra, former professor of mine and ongoing Yoda-like guru, once told me that the sign of an emotionally healthy person is the presence in that person’s of life of friendships across the generations.
Several of you have accused me of being twisted, insane or odd. Still, you’re contradicted by the fact I DO have many friends young and old, friends nowhere in the vicinity of my age or stage of life.
Many of those friends are younger, people whom I’ve had to fortune to get to know and watch grow. This is one of the unadvertised perks of ministry- that and the chance to dress like Obi Wan every Sunday morning. Many of these friends are leaving for or returning to college in the days ahead. The question above will be a question on many of their minds if their schools do their jobs well. For them, then, I offer this article from Relevant Magazine:
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, long hours.” This ad was placed in the early 1900s by explorer Ernest Shackleton as he was looking for men to help him discover the South Pole. The ad drew more than 5,000 brave candidates.
Do you think that ad would work today? Are job-hunters willing to work long hours—or be inconvenienced by difficult circumstances?
Chances are, you’re trying to find a job. Oh, sure, most of you have one, but it’s probably not your dream job. Or you might be working part-time.
Are you looking for a safe and stable posi- tion? One where you have a guaranteed salary, a company car, medical benefits and a three-week vacation? If so, you’re probably missing the best opportunities out there. The greatest opportunities today probably don’t look like your father’s dream job.
As a life coach, I have seen a dramatic shift in the workplace. No longer can one expect to graduate, get a great job, stay with that company for 35 years, get a gold watch and retire. That model is gone forever.
We have seen the collapse of major financial institutions, auto manufacturers, real estate companies and thousands of smaller companies around the world. Long-standing companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tower Records, Olan Mills, Borders and Circuit City are gone. Powerhouse retailer Macy’s cut 7,000 jobs in 2009 as people moved more and more toward online purchasing. Fifteen thousand newspaper jobs disappeared in 2009 alone. Blockbuster Video filed for bankruptcy protection in 2010 and announced plans to close nearly 1,000 stores as technology increasingly allowed for watching movies without cumbersome DVDs.
Is anything predictable in the current employment environment? Is it possible to find work that lets you embrace your calling and desire to change the world in a positive way? Can you take your unique personality, skills and passions and blend those into meaningful, purposeful and profitable work?
The answer to that question is a resounding yes. It just might look different than it’s ever looked—and you might need to change your idea of what work is.
WHY YOUR PARENTS’ WORK ISN’T YOURS
Previous generations assumed they would work, make lots of money and retire in ease. Unfortunately, many of them discovered that what they thought was security was simply an illusion, and the retirement they anticipated has vanished in the distance.
Continue to Read…
0 Young People Hate: Shallow Churches
According to his survey data, David Kinnaman in his book, You Lost Me: Why Young People Are Leaving the Church, reports:
1/3 of young Christians describe their church as boring.
1/4 answer that faith not relevant to their life or career interests.
24% respond that their church has not prepared them for real life.
Even worse: 1/5 young people say that God seems to be missing from their experience in church.
What may appear as small percentages (at least it’s not 80% right?) represent millions of young people who’ve written off the faith.
A major reason why they’ve done so, Kinnaman says, is that there’s a thin-ness to the Christianity offered by many churches that unavoidably leads to disinterest: ‘To many young people who grew up in Christian churches, Christianity seems boring, irrelevant, and sidelined from the real issues people face. It seems shallow.’
This shallowness, he says, has two aspects. One, young people have only a superficial understanding of the bible or their faith. They Christianity they (dis)believe is only about an inch deep. Two, churches spend much time, energy and resources communicating a lot of information about God but do not disciple believers into living in the reality of God. Knowledge may equal power but it doesn’t necessarily equal discipleship.
What churches have given young people then is a faith best described by Christian Smith as Moral Therapeutic Deism, which Kenda Dean describes as ‘God as a cosmic butler’ religion. Tellingly, it’s a faith that doesn’t believe in a living, active God who calls-demands- we give our lives to him. Consequently, it’s a faith that has no need for a church community. It’s no wonder young people write off church; we’ve given them a version of Christianity that doesn’t require it.
Kinnaman not surprisingly takes the Church to task for how its neglected its mission: valuing attendance #’s over spiritual growth, lacking meaningful rituals to develop young people’s faith as they age, failing to provide real-life application, forgetting to foster a culture of vocation in congregations, and expecting too little of young people.
Beating up the Church on these counts is too easy, though.
Kinnaman also take aim at the culture, parents and, yes, youth for the shallowness problem. He argues that from all sides, all the time, young people are catered to. Ads tell young people they’re beautiful, cool and their desires implicitly justified. Helicopter parents tell their children they’re center of the universe. Churches fall all over themselves just to have youth show up. ‘All this,’ Kinnaman says, ‘leads to a faith that lacks one essential ingredient: humility.’
If you’re convinced you already know everything and are good just as you are then ‘there are not a lot of compelling reasons to sit in the dirt at the feet of Jesus and live the humble life of a disciple.’
But maybe all is not lost.
Maybe there’s hope in the very problem.
If young people think church is shallow then that means they’re also likely cynical. What else could such a me-centered advertised world produce but cynicism. And if they’re cynical, then that means, on some level, young people must know that everything they’ve been told by their parents, churches and Madison Ave is, in some sense, a lie. And that, I think, makes them ripe for someone like Jesus to come along and co-opt their lives.