Not The Religious Type

R.I.P. Ted Kennedy

My family and I saw an amazing thing a few days ago.

We were driving on a local freeway in a rainstorm.  And suddenly there were all these cars pulled over on the shoulder—everywhere, both sides of the road and also on overpasses.

The last time I’d seen something like that was when I was in San Francisco for the famous Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, the one that stopped the World Series. That day I was driving home in the evening commute and suddenly everyone was pulled over and looking at their tires, because it felt as though you’d just blown all four of them.

In this case, we figured out what it was.  Ted Kennedy’s funeral processional.

There were people holding up signs as suddenly this police caravan zoomed by.  And it hit me that, as a non-native, I still couldn’t understand the connection this man had made with a state that had re-elected him to 47 years in the Senate.

I have no real comment at all on Kennedy’s politics.  Just this morning, I read a fascinating piece in the New York Times from one of their conservative columnists, Ross Douthat, about the substantial difference between Kennedy’s brand of liberalism with that of his sister, Eunice, who founded the Special Olympics and died herself only 13 days before Ted, only to be overshadowed by him yet again.  Douthat vividly writes about Eunice’s staunch opposition to abortion as a Catholic, as a liberal, and as someone who founded the Special Olympics, and how that was the mainstream Democratic position until about 1970.  Anyway, all to say, I found the article to be a gripper.  (On this tangent, if you’re interested in politics, this morning’s Times editorial page is a feast. Check out Paul Krugman’s piece, provocatively headlined “Missing Richard Nixon.”) But I also have thought a lot about Ted Kennedy’s life in ways that make me think about issues this blog addresses.

And, just to say, if you’re someone who listens to my sermons, either live or via the web, this will come up this upcoming Sunday, so feel free to take a mental Bahamas trip during that section.

Earlier this year our local newspaper did a series on Ted Kennedy’s life and legacy, both anticipating his death and plugging the book they’d just released on him.  I didn’t read all of it.  The thing was really long.  But I did read a lot of it, thinking, heck, here’s my chance to learn about this guy who’s so big here but who I feel I still know relatively little about.  And one part of his story really stuck with me.

Beyond the sensationalist parts—beyond Chappaquiddick, beyond what the obituaries I read called his “large flaws,” beyond his politics which drew big fans and big opponents—was this really interesting section on how he’d never really wanted to run for President, but felt he was supposed to because of his family legacy.

And how, after he didn’t win the 1980 presidential nomination, he decided, heck, what do you know?, he’d just be a Senator.  Evidently to really be a Senator for the long haul mostly required working behind the scenes. It required taking lots of partial victories and working on small details, most of which would never be seen or known by anyone who wasn’t involved, which wouldn’t get anybody any glory, unlike being President.

There were a number of quotes in the Globe’s story from Republicans who described Kennedy as the most effective Senator at actually legislating—whether for good or ill, I’ll leave to your judgment.  One Republican called him far and away the most effective Senator, saying that that wasn’t really in question.

The article described how Kennedy counseled John Kerry, after Kerry lost the Presidency in that razor-close vote in 2004.  Evidently the only thing Kerry ever really wanted was to be President—being a Senator was only valuable for its role in setting him up for the presidency. But after he lost the presidency, Kennedy evidently encouraged him to take actual pleasure in being an effective Senator, that you could do a lot of good that way.  And, after about three years of licking his wounds, Kerry took him up on it, and, according to the article, is now regarded as a major, helpful Senator, perhaps even Kennedy’s heir as “far and away the most effective Senator.”

All of this inspires me on a lot of levels, on the level of finding one’s calling even in defeat and discouragement, on the level of steady perseverance towards a large goal as having real power, on the level of keeping steady vision towards one’s largest goals and chipping away right up until one’s time on earth is over.  (Just this month, Kennedy made headlines locally for lobbying for a quick appointment of his successor.  Kennedy anticipated an imminent vote on universal health care—his lifelong passion—and wanted to make sure Massachusetts had two votes on the issue.) 

Surely this has something to say about the big goals we talk about here.  What do you think?

A Place to Run-To, Not Run-From / Steve Hamilton (Baltimore, MD)

You know how when you are in a conversation with someone and stumble upon some topic that they are really into, and they start getting all passionate and animated, and it makes you take a step back and say "Okay. Tell me how you really feel about that." Well, I believe for God, that issue is justice or what we might more precisely call biblical justice.

Biblical justice is the more precise term that I prefer, mostly because it reflects the range of justice issues that I see God clearly and deeply cares about, as witnessed in scripture and in my own experience.  The issues of biblical justice are social, economic and environmental.  They are also intertwined and interconnected.  This is especially the case in one of the ministries I work in: fighting against the wickedness of human trafficking and helping victims and survivors.  The issues of biblical justice (social, economic, environmental) are not issues to arm ourselves with for a culture war, nor mere hot topics for a lot of conversational hot-air.  If we would just take to the streets and do something about them, we might in fact find no culture war left to fight in the wake of justice and healing that follows in our wake.  The sad fact is that truth and justice are being trampled in the streets of America, but a war on culture has not made a difference.  What might begin to make a difference would be to wrestle not with flesh-and-blood, but with the powers behind environmental crises, poverty, and social injustice.

Unfortunately, there are other complicating issues.  I think churches by-and-large today are places where the broken run from. In truth, the Church should be the safe place for the broken to run to.  This fact grieves me so, because I know it to be a fact.  I have sat and given permission to survivors of trafficking to speak their mind and lament what is in their hearts to God.  And do you know what I witness to?  They complain and lament to God that His people have failed them.  And I have been part of that problem and I lament that too.  How many poor are in your local church?  Do those trapped in prostitution find a safe place without condemnation in your fellowship?   

But hope persists in the margins, which in fact Christianity was indeed birthed. Christ was born in the margins, but His people have lost our roots.  My imagination is sparked by "what if's":

• What if the Church opened itself up to the prophetic pathos of God, so that His heart takes possession of our hearts?

• What if the Church - possessed with the heart and Spirit of God - could be moved into action; simple stuff, do what is in front of you, do what the Father is doing kind-of-stuff?

• What if the Church became known for doing-the-stuff Jesus did?

• What if the Church - or any local expression of it - could become the place the broken ran to in crisis, and not the one it runs from?

• What if the Church could swim further up-stream and tackle the messy root issues of an environmental crisis that spreads with each passing day?

I know that most of you here at this blog believe or are interested in centered-set theory, but how can centered-set go from theory to practice?  Does your faith community reach out to the victims of social, economic or environmental justice?  Do you welcome them in your midst, like on the "normal" Sunday service?  Can the paradigm or churches as a place of welcome be restored?  How can we re-welcome the ministry of hospitality in the church by-and-large?

Unworthiness / Vince Brackett (Chicago, IL)

From Dan: Hi Friends! I wanted to let you all know that Dave is on vacation this week and I am looking for guests posts. If you have something you've always wanted to say and haven't had the chance to do it yet, now's your opportunity! Send your thoughts and comments to dan@notreligious.org. With that said, I also wanted to give a big shout-out to Dave who over the past month managed to write the 150+ page manual "Culture Center Churches," and plan and execute a conference while running a large church. Well done, Dave. Enjoy your vacation.

Speaking of guest posts, here is a conversation starter from Vince Brackett:

How does "unworthiness" play into a Stage 4 faith in Jesus?  It seems that in every realm of Christian thought/expression I encounter, a sense of unworthiness, undeservedness, etc. is so central to faith in Jesus.  To me, this sometimes (not always)  seems like a manufactured guilt:  Like, over time, we've become the source of our own problem that Jesus has to save us from; and now, because we're so focused on that problem, we sometimes miss the more important things of life and faith. 

I don't get this sense of a centrality of unworthiness from our discussions of Stage 4 faith... maybe because I'm not sure if we've ever talked about unworthiness.

Now, I have definitely had points in my life of faith when a sense of unworthiness and what Jesus ended up doing with that was extremely profound and life-giving.  But, this may be because I was operating from a more Stage 2 worldview at that point.  Of course, regardless of whether that was Stage 2 or Stage whatever, that experience with God meant something to me, so I'm not saying it's bunk or unimportant to me.  BUT I'm wondering if, down the road, supposing there is some sort of Stage 4 revival of faith in the Secular West and there aren't a whole lot major Stage 2 approaches in the spotlight anymore, should we talk about that sense of "unworthiness"?  Probably some past approaches at faith are guilty of putting too much centrality on "unworthiness" but, is it necessary to faith at all?  What role does "unworthiness" play?  I know Paul talks about this... does he have anything to say?
 

Book Club, Part 2!

Emboldened by our enjoyable first book club opportunity, I'm reminded of--okay, it's not technically a book--a series of talks that the man of last week on our blog, Mark P-H, introduced me to many years ago that still strikes me as really central and helpful to the sorts of things we talk about here.

So, while we're taking an interlude to talk all things Catholic, can I introduce some of you to the works of Fr. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest who says some wise things that few others in the public sphere say so well?  I've now encountered lots and lots (and lots) of Rohr's teachings and writings and, as with so many things, some of it hits me as more helpful and profound than some other parts of it.  But, boy, one of several gifts that keep on giving from Rohr is Men and Women: The Journey of Spiritual Transformation, a two-CD audio series.  For all of those who are interested, can we say we'll talk about it here about a month from now?  That should handle ordering and listening to two long (80ish minutes each) talks.  (You can get them for $20 from the link, above.)

Maybe someday we'll tackle the far more difficult and complex task of talking about one of his magnum opuses ("opi?"), The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective.  But for those of us who'd like to, we'll start with these two talks.

As before, could you respond in the comments section if you plan to participate in this?  Thanks!

Dave's Thoughts on "Should We All Consider Becoming Catholic?"

Isn't it always the way?  I have tons of thoughts on Mark's super-provocative post and maybe 15 minutes with which to express them.  So, a cursory take.

First, I just want to state on the record that I am a Mark Phifer-Houseman fan of long-standing (as I am of so many of you) and was eager to toss some of his thoughts your way so that you could enjoy him to the degree that I've had so many chances to.

And I'm not sure I have many friends apart from Mark who--as someone who, at present, is not leading in a Catholic setting--would have the boldness or perspective to say such a thing.  One of my discoveries as I've taken on more leadership in church settings is that most anything I experience of any depth is from Catholic circles.  I've spent so much time looking for personal role models (maybe you can relate) and I've had such a hard time finding more than a few examples living.  As I look for historic examples, my role models are almost exclusively Catholic.  That must say something.

I also think back to a fun speaking gig I had a year ago at Boston College (a Jesuit school, as many of you will know).  Thanks to Dan Littauer, I had kind of a prestigious gig.  I was one of the speakers in their freshman series, a very high-profile event on their campus.  (I was being followed by someone even I'd heard of.)  When I was through talking about my shtick--centered-set, stage theory, blah blah blah--I had lots of folks waiting to talk (this was an engaged crowd).  The man who waited the longest to talk with me was a young Irish priest, in priestly garb.  His question: "So, Dave, having listened to you tonight...why is it that you're not Catholic?"  (My answer was two-fold.  (A) "I don't know.  It never crossed my mind.  Why aren't you a Vineyard pastor?"  (B) "All my heroes are Catholic.  So if you give me even a half-hearted pitch, I suspect I'll be the easiest convert you ever had."  His response to that: "Oh no no no.  There's lots of bad stuff too.")

So just to say, I think this is a great question.

And yet.  Here's why I suspect at least I won't be a Catholic priest anytime soon, celibacy and long training period aside.  First, while I hear you, Mark, about the impending church leadership of the global south, I'm not sold that the global south CAN answer the question we're asking here of how can we see an awakening in the very secular west/ north?  I've known many American pastors (who customarily don't live in very secular settings themselves) who very much look to such leaders for guidance.  But, at least in Protestant circles, great majority world Christian leaders are dealing with societies that, on our terms, would profile--forgive me for the broad generalities--as Stage 1 or early Stage 2.  All of these leaders advocate highly authoritarian approaches to ministry, which makes a ton of sense in their context, but I don't think will fly in the Stage 3 world we're talking about.  The problems these leaders are addressing are just far different than the set presented in the world we're describing.  Perhaps you'd push back that this isn't true of the Catholic leaders you're aware of in such settings, and I welcome that push back and learning more.

I also had a provocative conversation awhile back with an American Catholic leader who is in high-level conversations within the Catholic church.  He said that the consensus among the top brass was that Catholics, worldwide, are losing the next generation, that this is at crisis levels.  I mentioned I'd read George Weigel's powerful  The Cube and the Cathedral, which makes that case regarding Europe,  but that I thought Weigel's prescription to solve the problem was wrongheaded.  Namely that where the Catholic church has gone wrong in Europe is by not drawing firm enough boundaries, on our terms by not being bounded set enough.  The man I was talking with said, "Dave, you don't know the half of it.  Weigel's prescription is very much the consensus at the top, but even more so."  I asked him if he thought that would work, particularly in the very secular West, Europe in particular.  He said something like, "To my mind, it's got no shot."

So I feel like, for all our little-ness and lack of historical context, those of us interested in this conversation have a mission very much worth giving our lives to.  We will pay lots of costs not doing this in a context like the Catholic church, costs to my mind very well articulated by Prashant's series of comments to the last post.  Perhaps those are costs we could navigate.  But at present I'm not seeing it.

That said, almost all my historic heroes are Catholic, and it sounds like Mark is soon to introduce us to contemporary Catholic heroes we need to learn from, and I'm all in on that.

A Bold Thought from Mark: Should We Consider Becoming Catholic?

From Dave: Perhaps you missed Mark Phifer-Housman's super-provocative comment on the "Are All Dreams (Worth Their Salt) Leadership Dreams?" post from last week.  It has enough material for many posts of its own, but I'll settle for his final bold question, along with some closing affirmations and encouragements.  I have my own detailed response to Mark's thoughts, but in order to keep at least one of you as an actual reader of this post (as Mark's thoughts plus mine would make for quite a tome), I'll let him speak for himself and I'd love to hear your responses.  I'll get my chance later.

Finally, (I hope this one doesn't get me kicked off the island) What is wrong with a Kingdom dream of reuniting with the Catholic Church someday? They apologized and agreed with the Lutherans on 'Justification by faith' less than 15 years ago, after a 480 year disagreement. All that movement towards reconciliation and Biblical fidelity has happened in the last 50 years. They are a church in radical transition with high stakes for the future of Christianity world-wide. They represent 2/3 to 3/4 of the Christians worldwide, especially in the global South. Their "brand" is far more Gospel centered and Biblical than the Charismatic brand in the Global South - one has only to watch TV in an African or Latin American country and see the mimicking of all the worst of the health and wealth movement to be sickened in your souls - every leader longs to be a TV star with his private jet, just like Benny Hinn and all the rest. It's the one thing that makes me doubt that God exists. If it weren't for Paul and Peter's warnings that it would happen, I don't know what I would do.

Christianity in our lifetimes (assuming we are 30's and 40's) will be led and dominated by leaders from the global South, Kingdom leaders and cult leaders. Of the Kingdom leaders, priests, nuns, independent evangelists, Dalits in India, Anglicans in Africa - these leaders are the true apostles. They have suffered the persecutions and martyrdoms and hardships of our Lord and his apostles, not Brian McLaren, John Wimber, Rob Bell, Hillsong United (you fill in the blank with the hottest young leaders in the U.S. or British world). Frankly, more of the cult leaders are Protestants, precisely because they start their own movements and are accountable to no historic Institution or governing body anchored to the Scriptures' true witness that the Christian life, especially for the leaders, is an ongoing cycle of death and resurrection, of increasing weakness and frailty in ourselves and confidence and power in the Spirit's work apart from our talents, but through our weaknesses. Can one dream about 2 Cor. 12:9f? I don't think it's dream material. Thank God he doesn't show us in detailed dreams our Crosses before they come upon us.

For now, I am learning with the Catholics, journeying alongside their charismatic renewal stream. I think we have a lot to learn from them, and not just from the early Jesuits, but living Catholics and non-Western Anglicans and even some Orthodox in some places like Ethiopia. (But, the Orthodox churches of Russia and Greece are the counter-example to the Roman Catholics. They are corrupt, in bed with the State, and increasingly irrelevant in the global advance of the Gospel. May the Lord prove analysts wrong, since they too have precious gifts to contribute to the Body in the future.)

I do dream that our church would be a church and sodality planting dynamo. I dream of being linked together in a network with the Boston Vineyard and other churches with similar DNA and theology. I dream of 100,000's of secularized university educated urbanites coming into relationship with our Lord and fresh wineskins streaming out of the West/North in Partnership with the Global South churches. I dream of churches led in all the secularized cities of America and Europe with leadership shared between us Westerners and leaders of the church in the Majority world. "Establish the work of our hands!" (Psalm 90)

So, I do believe any Kingdom dream worth its salt is a leadership dream. We may need to be tested at the same level as Joseph who was so enamored of himself as the ruler in his dream, not the purpose of that rulership. But, by the time God gave him the rulership, his character was prepared to lead/rule for God's glory and to serve, even his murderous brothers and their offspring.

I really wish I was back at your culture summit. May the Lord free my entire church staff up for next year's.

The Summit!

Thanks for your prayers for the Summit (or your attendance at it)!  In a nutshell, it was awesome, at least for me.

We focused not--as per last year--on building a case for this approach to faith and mission.  Instead we largely assumed buy-in and set up opportunities to talk together, which I at the very least really enjoyed.  I left feeling connected in very much a new way to a number of other leaders and churches, and that was very encouraging and powerful for me.

There certainly were some great things said from the front.  Charles Park was his customary inspiring and motivating self.  I thought Chris Lowney gave us a lot of food for thought.  The worship gang took us into the middle of a dynamic, ongoing conversation about centered-set worship.  And I was at the very least able to let folks know about resources, opportunities, and ongoing conversations they might not have been aware of.

The worship itself was just great, from my perspective, with an interplay between Casey Corum's great, guitar-driven, up-to-the-minute contribution, Christopher Greco and the band's gospel perspective and David Linhart's neo-spirituals.

We spent some time on specific resources (Seek [on the way to DVD form, for those for whom that would be helpful], Leap of Faith [the erstwhile 40 Days of Faith], Culture Center Churches [a new book detailing an approach to church ministry in very secular places] in particular). 

We talked about some blue sky dreams of putting together a formal "institute"--a brick and mortar place where people could come for training in this stuff from all over, at the very least, the secular west.  A few of us who have started laying plans for that got together to push the conversation forward and we're hopeful the first concrete initiatives that direction will be in place and happening by next summer.

A few of us talked about the plan for this blog to transition sometime this upcoming year into being a resource-rich website for any folks looking to be helpful for Jesus in very secular places.  Some of us took solemn oaths (can I remind those of you who did this of your solemn oaths?  Solemn oaths!!!) to document what we're finding helpful along these lines in order to start to share more freely with those engaged in this same thing.  The blog itself should continue there in column form.

And we threw out potentially fun joint activities--some of the churches will be joining together in a formal cohort to work together on some things this year and many of the churches, sort of spur of the moment, will be Daniel fasting together (in brief, a "Daniel fast" seems to involve fruit, vegetables and whole grains) during a 21-day stretch starting October 18.  (My church plans to be one of those!)  I'll have more on that later.

But this is mostly to say thanks so much for your prayers!  They were very much felt.  Going into the Summit, in candor, it wasn't entirely clear if this year's version was going to fly as well even as last year's did.  But, far from "not flying," my feeling was that this was a completely-God-empowered, meaningful time together.

To those of you who came, thanks thanks thanks.  And,  to those of you who didn't come,  but prayed,  God bless you!  May your prayers for  this continue to have great impact.

The ongoing plan--as we talked about at the summit--is to run these each year as gatherings for partners in this endeavor, both new and ongoing.  (Please do think about people you know--in or out of your area--who should be at these summits and get next year's on their calendar.)  It's not intended to be a "conference" per se, meaning that it's not meant to be a place one comes to once, gets some new info that's either helpful or not, and then goes on one's merry way.  It really will work best as a yearly gathering for folks who dream of seeing a centered-set awakening in the secular west and who value cultivating ongoing partners along the road there.  If that's you, please do mark out, say, August 12-15 2010 (we haven't even talked dates for 2010 yet, so these are inexact, but this should be in the ballpark and we'll let you know soon).  

Thanks again for your prayers and  partnership!  To those of you who were there, you rock!  I already miss seeing and talking with you.

Pray for the Culture Center Summit!

Tonight we start in with the new, improved Culture Center Summit, so if nothing else, for your purposes--dear blog partners--it will mean we'll need to find some use for the space currently occupied by its logo.  But that's for another day.

This will be a fun and interesting summit.  Last year's focus was beating the drum for the need for such a thing.  We had lots of talks making that point in one form or another.  My main talk involved me reciting lots of stats and quotes that suggested that faith in Jesus was in desperate straits in the western world without addressing things as we were suggesting.  I promoted the summit wherever I was--Charles Park did this somewhat as well--and so we drew lots of folks, including many of you, exploring whether they bought this pitch.

This year has brought an entirely different approach.  I haven't promoted the summit anywhere I've spoken this year, though I've mentioned the blog here and there.  Our only marketing was here and to those who were on our list from last year.

The thought behind this was that what's needed now are people who, having bought in, are hoping to actually begin to forge partnerships along these lines.  We had opportunities to stump for this, say, in magazines targeting emergent Christians or websites along the same line, but we passed.  Our thinking is that this way of life and thought doesn't work all that well as a hip new strategy for, say, "reaching lost people"--and we've had some people really interested in us on those terms, who, like the rich young ruler in the gospels, have gone away sad.  So promoting this stuff as one strategy among many to choose from to create a happening church has seemed counterproductive.

So I'm excited for what will be happening over the next several days.  We'll have senior leadership from, if I'm counting correctly, 14 churches and folks from more than that.  By definition we'll be significantly smaller than last year (i.e., we only promoted to folks on last year's list, so getting bigger was off the table from the start).  But rather than reiterating last year's approach and offering lots of content to make the case for this stuff, we'll be offering far less content (although--do pray for this--we're excited to hear from Chris Lowney this year, who was on tap for last year, but had a family crisis and needed to cancel; and we'll be hearing from our worship/music crew on Saturday night in what should be a fun addition to what we've done so far). 

Instead, we'll be spending lots of time together in working groups to, one hopes, actually begin to forge functional working partnerships at a lot of levels.  I spent the summer writing a "how to" book on this stuff that we'll unveil here and, one hopes, it should offer at least a starting point for some conversations.  Lay leaders and worship leaders/musicians will have their own conversations, and there will be breakout conversations on any number of things (justice issues, for instance).

So, all to say, could you take even a brief moment right now and pray for this gathering?  I'd really appreciate it.

Our goal is a modest one: to foment what in the old days would get called "an awakening" in the secular west.  We may be naive in the extreme to think that our efforts will make a key difference there (or maybe we're not!), but I'm confident that your prayers along that line are right at the heart of what's helpful.

And, if you want to take a moment even to comment here something along the lines of  "I've prayed!", I'd take that as a great encouragement.

Lots of love.

Continuing the Ever-Popular H and C's Conversation

...That would be "homosexuality and churches," but for whatever reason I didn't have the heart to put that in yet another subject line, lest we seem like a single-issue bunch.  I clearly don't mind BEING a single-issue bunch, but evidently I want at all costs to avoid being SEEN that way.

Liz BN put a nub on the conversation with her lengthy comment asking, effectively, even if one bought into the article I posted Monday, should one ask one's gay friend to visit such a church as sort of a guinea pig?  Or would they need to hear a bit more to avoid being a test case?

One friend recently commented, with the church I lead, that he felt he could entrust a gay friend to me or a few of our leaders to be treated well, but he wasn't so sure it would go well with the larger church population, which effectively meant he couldn't invite that friend to our church.  So Liz' question is well-asked.

Another friend, following our blog conversation, pushes back provocatively as follows:

It's one thing to be open and prepared and have a more satisfying conversation with the GLBT who finds their way to us.  It's quite another thing to go knocking at the GLBT door, and say we're here for you.

 My ultimate concern is not whether we’ll become too loving and accommodating, but whether we will overpromise and underdeliver in our earnest and intelligent naivete.  (Which is not to say, don’t do it.  We’re as earnest and intelligent and naïve as we are, God be praised.) 

 Will we be here for them a few years down the road when it's not the cutting edge issue which demands our blogging?  When unexpected mess bubbles to the surface in private?  When a hard conversation blows out the very person we worked hard to make space for or alienates a portion of our tithe-paying community who can't bridge the gap?  Are we ready to make space for people who will threaten our very sense of ourselves, our sense of community, and what it means to be a Jesus follower (not because they're trying to be difficult, but simply by nature of how "other" they are and how "otherly" they live and love than we do)?  To what extent do we feel similarly excluded from "church" and in GLBT we've found someone worse off than ourselves for whom to fight?  To what extent is what we really dig the diversity, subversiveness, and creative vitality?  To what extent do we really have time for the individual GLBT person, in their pain and their power?  To what extent have we reckoned with our own waywardness and brokenness when it comes to sexuality and relationship, and are we prepared to go there?  To what extent is what we really want to have a voice in a secular culture which will dismiss us if we don't become gay savvier?

 GLBT are not the only ones who have cynicism to overcome in relationship to the church.  From my vantagepoint, there was a cutting edge in this in the mid-1980’s, and the church as a whole hedged and moved on to other things. 

 GLBT, the Lord, and opportunity knock again.  To raise the cliché acting question, “what’s our motivation” to open the door, as it will influence what happens next.

On my end, I've actually pondered a mid-range next step--that whether "mid-range" in my mind or not would probably have fallout--of going more public with the kind of meta-processing about the question that we do here. 

My take--naive as it may be--is that the position I strike in the article from Monday isn't actually a theological one.  It's neither about being "open and affirming" nor about being "biblically-faithful in the face of a pc secular onslaught."  What might seem jarring about it to many churchgoers is just the framework with which it opens the questions. 

Would going more-public with such a framework while making no theological comments whatsoever be a useful step forward or just beside the point?  In this one are we back to where churchgoers were with the abortion conversation--it's us or them and don't try to pussyfoot around that?

Are All Dreams (Worth Their Salt) Leadership Dreams?

When Not the Religious Type was getting ready to come out, Dan Littauer (of Not Religious) and I got together with a man who knew more than we did about publishing.  He said something surprising, to this effect.

"Dave, of course you want to do as well as you can with this book.  But as I hear you talk, it seems to me that your hopes are not about any book.  To do what you want to do, you need to think long and hard about creating an institution.  Individual genius and accomplishment fade faster than you'd think.  Billy Graham is astounding.  The Catholic Church is more astounding.  Think about it."

I meet so many talented and ambitious young people that it seems churlish to pitch that their dreams are not about their dreams, that their dreams are about some sort of collective endeavor.  But it's interesting to think about this in terms of even the most-individualistic of professions, the arts.  For instance, I'm the only person I know who's had a longstanding interest in this artist's collective from the 20s called The Algonquin Round Table.  It was a gathering of these witty, successful playwrights and journalists and poets like Dorothy Parker and George S. Kaufman and Robert Benchley and more. They were in all the gossip columns of the day.  I like a ton of what they wrote.  But by and large, while their names may stir vague memories in some people, they're forgotten, as huge as they were at the time.  The one who left something behind turned out to be a surprising candidate.  He was the least witty of the crew.  His name was Harold Ross and he started The New Yorker.  His brilliance didn't last.  His institution's did.

Or I think of great filmmakers of the golden age of film, the 30s and 40s.  We've got Victor Fleming (Gone with the Wind) and Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, The Adventures of Robin Hood) and John Ford (The Searchers) and, goodness, Alfred Hitchcock (if I have to mention his films, you should just skip to the bottom of the paragraph).  But who is the most influential artist of that era?  You could make a case it's Walt Disney.  The others are memorable to the small circle of people living today who like old movies.  Disney, let's just say, has a very present impact. 

We've got this Culture Center Summit coming up starting Thursday night.  Its entire theme will be about banding together towards the kind of institution that could feel more like Disney or Ross or (this is overreaching, but for the sake of the point) the Catholic Church. 

I hold out hope that my individual brilliance and accomplishment will shine so powerfully that many will praise its beauty.  May it be.

But it seems to me that your dreams and my dreams, under God, are most powerfully reinterpreted into collective dreams.  Jesus says he blesses prayers from two or more people.  Peter and Paul were individual geniuses, but they were rallying others towards something that would long outlast their own brilliance.

What are your thoughts about how this does or doesn't tie into your own dreams?  Is your dream a leadership dream?  How so?

Centered-Set Thinking and Homosexuality

Thanks all you music-lovers out there who commented on the Warren Zevon post.  I suppose I'm working out what it is about this messed-up musician that grabs me as much as it does recently, and you all gave me food for thought on that front.

Some of you will remember that maybe six weeks ago we were in a discussion of churchgoing-and-homosexuality, inspired by reading a powerful new book by Andrew Marin called Love is an Orientation.  I mentioned then that I'd written an article on how some of the thinking in this blog might intereract with those questions.  The article didn't work out in the original setting--but it's found a home elsewhere (and it's nice to have a home...).  I briefly reprinted it here, before pulling it for reasons too complicated to mention here.  But I mentioned that, like Frosty the Snowman, it would return again someday.  And you'll be happy to know that that day seems to be today.

It's on the long side for this blog (it will be about twice as long as any other entry) so if you want to take a look at it, grab a cup of coffee and pull up a favorite chair.

Many of you have already seen it in its brief run here previously.  But, as always, I'd love all of your thoughts.  Here's the article.

                A friend—I’ll call her Tara—had a noteworthy experience at her work.  A lesbian co-worker started to read a hotel Bible on a business trip.  Upon her return, she asked Tara if Tara could get her a Bible, because she wanted to continue reading.  Then she talked to Tara about answered prayer: had Tara experienced that God sometimes would answer our prayers?  Because—who knew?—apparently God would. 

                It sounds, Tara said to her co-worker, as if this is all new for you.  Have you ever explored faith in God before?  No, the woman said, it had never crossed her mind.  Because everyone knew God wasn’t a god for gay people, only for straight people.

                Then there was the conversation my wife had earlier this week.  A woman—also a lesbian—had been exploring Buddhism last summer.  I’ll call her Amanda.  She was on a summer project in England and she and a co-worker there had gotten into a casual conversation about faith.  She talked about her incipient Buddhism and the co-worker talked about prayer to Jesus.  That night, Amanda tried this crazy new idea of praying to Jesus.  Good things happened.  She asked for more advice from her co-worker, and her co-worker encouraged her to find a church to explore when she got back to the States.

                I met Amanda when she joined in with a class we run called Seek.  It’s a course for people exploring faith that’s similar to Alpha, except, perhaps, that it focuses more on how to experience God than how to think about God.  

                Every week was better for Amanda than the one before, topped off by our Holy Spirit Day, when she was robustly filled with the Spirit.  She told my wife that she’d never considered looking into a church or into Jesus, because the word on the street was that Jesus and churches didn’t like her.  But her experience in Seek had been entirely great.  But now, as she was considering being baptized, she wanted to ask whether, contrary to everything she’d understood for so much of her life, it was actually wise for her to follow Jesus.

                Like many of yours, our church is in a very secular city—Boston.  And one thing we’ve noticed that perhaps you’ve experienced as well is that homosexuality is a major, major topic of conversation for people exploring faith here.  I was talking a few years back with a Hispanic pastor who was leading a statewide fight opposing gay marriage.  I asked him if that cost him at all with the secular Latinos he was trying to reach.  Did they also oppose gay marriage?  Indeed they did.  He estimated about 95% of secular Latinos in Boston would oppose gay marriage and would be repelled by homosexuality in general.  I said I guessed that the percentages of secularists I talked to would be the inverse of his—almost all the secularists I talk with regard gay rights as basic human rights.

                And then, of course, there are the gay people themselves I meet who are eager to explore Jesus but, as with the two women above, can’t imagine how that would be possible.

                I wonder if John Wimber offered us some help here.  He taught a concept he learned from his colleague at Fuller Seminary, Paul Hiebert.  Perhaps there are two different sorts of churches: one you might call “bounded set” and one you might call “centered set.”

 

A bounded set is like a circle: you’re either inside it or outside it.  You’re a liberal or you’re a conservative, but not both.  You’re a Midwesterner or you’re a Southerner or you’re whatever.  But let’s think about bounded-set faith.  On these terms, faith—and whatever any given church regards as going along with faith—is either/or and to a great degree is about what opinions or beliefs you hold.  What are the boundary lines to what we regard as true faith?  How do we know if someone is in or out?  What are the rules? 

By contrast, a centered set is like a central dot surrounded by endless other dots.  The center dot is whatever holds the set together—Jesus, for our purposes.  The other dots are everyone else on earth.  And the question of a centered set isn’t about being inside or outside of something.  It’s about whether the other dots are moving towards Jesus or veering away from him.  Wherever they might be on the page, the only real issue is their direction.  And so the job of the spiritual leader is to help folks point their arrows, as it were, towards Jesus. 

So, to oversimplify, perhaps the central encouragement from a bounded-set church perspective would be “believe in Jesus!”  or “accept Jesus!”  And the central encouragement from a centered-set church perspective might be “start following Jesus!” and course-correct as needed as you go.  The thought is that Jesus, then, will personally provide feedback and direction along the journey of faith, even as spiritual leaders, of course, do their best to help out as well.  So Tara’s co-worker starts praying to a God no one has ever talked with her about; she gets quick answers and encouragement, and she wants to learn more to keep this good thing going.

                This seems to me to offer at the very least arresting thoughts about the conversations I so often find myself in on this subject.  As I talk with my proudly bounded-set church-leader friends—the Latino pastor for instance—they’ll encourage me that the most important thing to tell gay people I meet is that they need to repent of their homosexuality, that it’s an abomination to God.  I sometimes push back: does my church-leader friend feel that this is the most important message of the Bible?  That, if we were to strip the Bible to its biggest theme, what we’d find is “homosexuals need to repent”?  Wouldn’t we find something about, like, God?  Or, better yet, Jesus? 

                No, they tell me, courageous Christians realize they need to deal with first things first.  First things first?! I ask incredulously.  Homosexuals needing to repent is the single most important message of the Bible?  First things first, they respond, nodding sternly.  On occasion I ask if they ever actually do talk with gay people.  I have yet to meet the church leader with this message who’s told me yes.

                One of our pastors not long ago was encouraging a group of Christians to do something non-controversial: think of six friends you have in your area who, best as you can discern, are not experiencing much from God.  Then pray for them daily for a few months and see what happens.  He opened the time up for Q&A.  But, one questioner asked, what if my friend is gay?  Our pastor was flummoxed.  Was this questioner asking… whether gay people are worth praying for?  Yes the questioner was.  After a moment’s reflection, our pastor answered: …Of course.

                As we started up in Boston, we guilelessly tried to follow Wimber’s centered-set approach and we’ve noticed some surprising things as a result.  I’ve talked with the head of a regional evangelical association recently who told me that the average strong, evangelical church in our region sees about 3% non-transfer growth, growth that comes from people exploring or re-exploring faith.  We see about twelve times that number.  We see lots and lots of folks freshly experience faith.

                We have a simple take on why this is so.  Jesus is astoundingly awesome and people who try out following him will love him and love the experience.  This strikes us as a centered-set point of view. Again, there is endless feedback Jesus will offer anyone who moves his way—as the two women I’ve mentioned so powerfully experienced.  There, of course, will be a lot of learning about which choices will veer our arrow away from Jesus and which will veer us towards him.  But this is Jesus we’ll be taking this journey with, which pretty much guarantees it will be a good one. 

                So what am I proposing with all of this?  On the face of it, not much.  I suppose I’m starting by asking whether the two women whose stories I started with are right: is, in fact, the God of the universe not a God for gay people?  Or were they misinformed?  It strikes me that your answer to that, which I’m hoping doesn’t take you much time to arrive at, carries some immediate challenges with it.  If this God is their God, most likely they (or some conservative Christian who is feeling you out when they realize you’ve invited a gay person to follow God) will ask you a question or two that is fraught with danger on all sides.

                Most likely they’ll start with this one: Could a gay person ever lead in your church?  I have a pitch to make about how you might answer which I’d expect to rankle you.  But hang with me a minute.

                Namely, if you answer their question either way you’re abandoning Wimber’s centered-set idea. 

People are asking you that question, from either side, because they want to figure out what sort of bounded set you’re in.  These are identity-politics questions and I’ve yet to experience an answer to them that has helped point anyone towards Jesus in a centered-set way.  By contrast, I’ve experienced countless instances where an answer to that question has hardened someone against following Jesus—or has confirmed a longtime Christian in heart attitudes that haven’t served them. 

                But what of not answering the questions as expected?  Particularly for conservative Christians, this can seem like evasion.  “Hey, I asked you a direct question and I want a direct answer.”  But perhaps you can take comfort that this was how Jesus responded to similar, bounded-set questions.

                I have two recommendations, one easier than the other (though they’re both plenty hard).  First, I might suggest saying something like, “Oh, our absolute commitment here is to following Jesus with everything we have.  We do that through a few things.  Learning more about and wholeheartedly following the teachings of the Bible.  Learning to hear and obey God’s voice as best as we can.  Learning to love people inside and outside of our congregation.  And trying to do all of those things in the context of vibrant community.  We’d be excited for anyone to lead who gave themselves wholeheartedly to those things and found that they had people eager to follow their leadership into more of the same.”

                The expected follow-up: “Just to clarify.  Even if they’re gay.” 

And your reply: “Any leaders who are on board with what we’re doing, committed to learning more about and wholeheartedly following the teachings of the Bible, learning and growing in hearing and following God’s voice…you bet.  We can’t find enough leaders like that.”  I’m presuming you have no argument with that statement.

                Except for this one: you may find yourself thinking in profound frustration, what the questioner is driving at is if you regard that as possible for a non-celibate gay person!  My response on the occasions when that does get blurted out is usually along the lines of, “Oh, anyone who’s at that point in their journey with us will be at a great place to have that sort of conversation with us when the time comes where they’re figuring out if they should lead.”

                So that imagined dialogue was the easier of my recommendations!  Here’s the harder one: believe what you’re saying.  Realize that this isn’t a tactic at all.  That the heart of the Bible is to encourage people to follow Jesus with their whole hearts and then to have whatever conversations you need to have as you go, that nothing preempts this.  If you catch me off-line and ask me what I really think about these questions, what I’ve just said is what I will tell you.  (If this has actually happened and I’ve said anything different, I repent.)  There is no chink in my armor.  I’m all-in on this way of thinking.  I think you will see endless good things happen in your life and church with GLBT (and secular) folks if you do this.  That said, if, in the end, you understandably feel the need to draw boundaries up front, fair enough. 

                But, for me, it’s centered-set or bust.  Jesus is the only God in town, for straights or gays.  I’m rooting for all my friends to follow him.  I think they’ll be pleased with what happens if they do.

Desperados Under the Eaves

Historically the people who've helped me think most deeply about life are artists (or mystics, I suppose), and artists are typically really screwed-up people.  For a case in point, I give you the late, great Warren Zevon.

I used to be a music critic (fun fact--I was blown off in the span of a month for scheduled interviews with Stevie Nicks and Amy Grant; is there anyone else alive who can make that claim?), so I was once astoundingly culture-current regarding music.  Then I grew up, and all that was gone.  And then I had kids and my artistic impulses began to coalesce around musicians who'd made a difference to me in younger days.  This has been pointed out to me by the poor musicians in our midst who've been forced into one too many performances of a new tune by, say, Joe Jackson (I'm telling you, anyone who doesn't think "Rush Across the Road" from last year is genius...well, what can one say to such people?).  So I'm listening and, if you're a part of our church, prepare for tunes from the likes of Sara Bareilles and Gavin DeGraw.

Meanwhile, on my own time, I'm immersing myself in Warren Zevon.

Let me give you a little background on Zevon, should you care.  And then I actually have a theological (or metaphysical...or something) point to make from his music. 

Zevon came up in arguably the last great stretch of American pop music.  (Clearly this is debatable, and we all tend to lobby for the seasons that have made the most difference to us.  But there are actually whole books devoted to, say, 1974 as the year pop music started its death march in America.  The argument is that this is when any semblance of the pop world being an artists' colony vanished in the middle of mega-corporate buyouts of most music labels.  These folks would point to the great seasons of American pop music as being, say, 1937-1949 [Gershwin, Berlin, Cahn, the rise of Sinatra and the big bands] and, say, 1968-1977 [when 60s artistry found a form and left behind drecky 50s vestiges--the Association ("Cherish"), for instance--and moved into Motown, singer-songwriters, and the California artists' colony.)

Zevon met lots of the California up and comers--Jackson Browne became a major backer, the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, ultimately he became friends with non-Californian Springsteen.  Zevon was magnetic and smarter and more literate than anyone else--his bios customarily call him the "genius" of the bunch.  And his music, particularly, his early music, is a mix of phenomenally tuneful and seriously ambitious pop music.  David Letterman devoted an entire show to Zevon when Zevon was given only a couple months to live because of lung cancer.  Letterman's request was that, whatever else happened on the show, Zevon sing (Zevon's voice had lost a lot by then--lung cancer will make one a bit breathless) "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner," this apocalyptic song about the immortality of violence. 

Zevon's only hit was a goof--"Werewolves of London."  But on the same album he has one of the catchiest, edgiest songs in history about how men are fundamentally dangerous ("Excitable Boy").  (You could make the point that that's the bottom-line point as well of "Werewolves.")

Grace has mixed feelings about Zevon.  His long-divorced, but still-friendly, wife, Crystal, put together a memoir about Zevon with reflections from all his musician friends along with his endless list of literary friends (Stephen King, Carl Hiasson, Mitch Album [who cowrote a hoot of a song with Zevon about a hockey goon who, at the very end of his career, gets a chance to take a shot on goal--"Hit Somebody"--Letterman actually sings backup on that one; he's the guy shouting "Hit somebody!"], Ross MacDonald, Hunter S. Thompson).  And Zevon comes across as about the worst addict who ever lived (which seemingly is what convinced him that men are fundamentally dangerous), a womanizer, and the sort of charismatic but vexing narcissist that you'd steer clear of after you caught onto his act.  But Grace, with her mixed feelings, will be the first to say that "Lawyers, Guns and Money" might be the most-delightful rock song ever written.  (I once asked some rock buddies of mine to work up "Lawyers" for a Sunday service at our church.  They listened to it, were appalled and perplexed why I'd suggest such a thing, and turned me down.  I took that as God's wisdom and bagged the idea.)

Which brings me to "Desperados Under the Eaves" and why I bring up Zevon at all. This is a catchy, symphonic song from his light-selling first album ("Werewolves" was on the second album).  To my mind, it's a distillation of the artist's impulse.  The singer is living in a seedy, Hollywood hotel, unable to pay his bill.  (There's a very clever line about that in the song.)  He sounds like an alcoholic (he wakes up with "shaking hands").  But he's caught up in this exciting time in California.  For all his problems, "heaven help the one who leaves."  You can't leave.  You're broke, drunk, lonely and blocked, but nonetheless you feel you might just be a "desperado under the eaves"--you're the outlaw who sees what nobody else sees, who sees the truth through an artists' eyes.  If only you weren't broke, addicted, lonely and blocked.  (This song got me back into Nathanael West, whose Day of the Locust was about this several decades previously.)  Grace has mixed feelings about this song--doesn't that sound like what a narcissist would say?  HE'S the super-special one.  Nobody sees his true genius.

But I wonder if that's at the heart of many people who may never be super-artists, but who strongly feel like they're onto something they can't quite grasp, but it's BIG, BIG, BIG I TELL YOU.  And they're in on the ground floor.  I wonder if that urge is at the bottom of revivalists, who feel they might just be seeing a work of God before anybody else.  It certainly seems very deep in me, which may speak poorly about me.

The song ends with a meditation on the hum of the air conditioner in the singer's room...a hum which becomes a full-blown symphony, which itself says something to me about the heart of the song.

All to say, as we take a little artist's interlude on the blog, take a listen to "Desperados Under the Eaves" if you'd like. (Download the lyrics).  Does this speak to something in you?  What is it?  Does it relate to your calling in God?  How?  Or does it vex you rather than call to you?  If so, why?

At core, are you more (a) open-hearted or (b) skeptical?

Perhaps, God help us, one more take on our "men and women and faith" conversation.

Here's something I've noticed in my marriage.  Grace is often very eager to go hear an interesting speaker on faith or to go to some kind of spiritual meeting--prayer, healing and so on.  I'm, mostly, eager to let her go while I put the kids down.  So what do you know?  I've become one of those men who stay at home while their wives go to church!  How do you like them apples?

Here's something else I've noticed (that the astute among you will note ties into a certain framework for understanding faith we often employ here, but that I--as a spiritual discipline--won't refer to for the remainder of this post).  I've run across churches and people (and have been included in their number) whom I'd label, say, "faith-filled and (over?)confident."  They've figured out how faith REALLY works unlike the rest of the lunkheads out there.  Often these are very spiritual churches.  (Many churches in my own movement might fit this paradigm.)  But sometimes they're very Bible-focused churches.  (Many growing churches in the South might fit this paradigm.  Certain booming seeker churches might as well.) 

But then you'd find a whole swath of people--maybe churches as a whole as well, but certainly individuals--who trend more towards being, say, "skeptical and reactive."  They flinch when they hear the faith-filled confidence of the folks in the preceding paragraph and they, in their thoughts at least, denigrate the oversimplification they feel from the faith-filled and confident crowd.

I wonder if each of us gravitates more easily towards one of these postures or the other.  And, as a massive overgeneralization, I wonder if--as we age--women (in the aggregate, certainly not individual by individual) trend towards the former and men towards the latter. (If it puts you at ease,  I'm about to argue that both, first, need the other and that both, in the end, need to transcend either of these categories.)

But I will say that, as a church worker, I meet more women in the first category and more men in the second.  So awhile back I had a lengthy conversation with a middle-aged woman whose Christian husband was treating her abominably.  He'd treat her all right, but then say vicious things to her and then try to move on from them without comment.  Her diagnosis?  He needed deliverance.  So she had tracked down teachers along this line who agreed with her and she was trying to learn from them what to do.  My response?  Or...maybe her husband had been mad about some things in their relationship, hadn't dealt with them, and his unprocessed resentment was slipping out.  He didn't want to be delivered (he wouldn't let these folks pray for him), so he probably needs some consequences to his behavior to let him understand the stakes of his choices.  Her response: no, it's demons.

(Another note.  I'm not saying she's wrong.  Demons may be involved.  Hang with me.)

And I talk with the occasional man whose wife goes to church while he reads the Sunday paper.  It's not that the man is angry that his wife wants to go to church.  If it helps her, great.  It's just not something he feels a need for.  He more lives in the world of "real-world solutions" to problems.

I'm wondering if lasting faith needs both open-heartedness and skepticism... and then something more.  But that, if we want to get this "something more," we also have to embrace that we tend towards one of the first two.

So Grace grew up with faith and it's served her well.  She's also, God bless her, open-hearted at a deep level.  She''ll comment on people she meets whom she could be friends with.  She gets in touch with her emotions immediately right at the start of the average worship set.  I, by contrast, grew up in secularism and am far more guarded.

The cost of open-hearted faith?  It can indeed be simplistic and its confidence is, to my mind, always misplaced.  It's not possible to "crack the code" of faith.  God is bigger than our one-stop solution.  One of the most faith-filled churches I've run across (of the spiritual variety) struck me both as delightful and as naive and vaguely scary when I crossed their path.  When someone in their leadership came down with a horrible disease, they were confident they'd "kick the devil's butt."  When he died, the church, to my mind, never recovered.

The cost of skepticism seems to be at least two-fold.  (1) It's a dead end.  (The Sunday paper only has so much to offer one's life.)  (2) It's flat wrong.  Many of those oversimplified things the skeptic rejects are, in fact, right.  The key phrase, though, that rankles both sides, is: "insofar as they go."

In my experience, just about every overconfident faith system is, in fact, right insofar as it goes.  To name names that we've bandied about recently, John Eldredge with his take on men and women.  His overconfident take on the question "every" man asks: Do I have what it takes?  His overconfident take on the question "every" woman asks: Am I desirable?  I can't tell you the number of people, myself included, who have told me they deeply resonate with him on these observations.  The most helpful response to Eldredge, to my mind, is along the lines of, "Wow!  I've got to learn from this guy!  And then I've got to file whatever I learn as a tool to use in the very complex thing that is the life of faith."  The unhelpful response?  To become an Eldredge junkie, which requires becoming "open-hearted/ overconfident."  There's more to life and more to faith than getting in touch with one's maleness or femaleness.  There may not be less to faith than that, but there is more.

Deliverance?  Crucial to learn about and to have as a tool at one's employ.  Inner healing?  Absolutely!  Catholic spiritual direction?  Key!  Church growth theory?  If you're a pastor, you'd be a fool not to take that stuff seriously.  Intercession?  I want more and better intercession from me and around me!  Social justice?  If we don't make a difference in the world around us, what good are we?!

ALL of these often-totalizing systems are absolutely right.  But what is it that gets us past being open-hearted/ overconfident and skeptical/ reactive?  I think the next step is to become...it sounds dull...faith-filled/ BALANCED.  Full of faith.  Eager to learn everything anyone has to teach that people find helpful.  And yet not even hoping to find a silver bullet, to find the "key" of faith. 

So I trend towards skeptical/ reactive.  Poor Grace who's not here to represent herself I'm saying trends towards open-hearted (though in her case BY NO MEANS overconfident...).  How about you?  What does that tell you about a path of growth for your life of faith?