Not The Religious Type

Let's Talk Richard Rohr!

Forgive my lateness in getting to the promised Richard Rohr book (or, in this case, CD) club!  Weekends (and life) being what they are, getting to this hasn’t been possible until now.  But, in the spirit (that I rely upon in so many areas of my life) of “better late than never,” here we go!

So, of course, what I’ll be asking at the end of those of you who listened to Rohr’s talks about Men and Women: The Journey of Spiritual Transformation is, “What struck you?  What was helpful?  Was there anything problematic?  Do you imagine you’ll change anything as a result of listening to Rohr’s talks?”  But let me take an initial shot at my own responses to those questions.

I heard these talks perhaps a decade ago and have listened to them many times since.  They prodded me to delve a bit deeper into Rohr’s teaching and I’ve since heard maybe three much longer sets (each with maybe ten 80 minute lectures) and have read, if I’m remembering, four of his books.  So clearly something struck me!

After that much reading and listening, it will be no surprise that I feel as though I’ve benefited from his immense strengths and, perhaps, have bumped into one or two of his limitations.  I—as mellow a theologian as one would find, at least in my circle of friends—have found that Rohr can push my own sense of orthodoxy a bit farther than I prefer.  For a contemplative, I don’t hear a ton from Rohr about hearing from God or even, in some ways, knowing God.  After awhile with Rohr, I can feel like everything he says or writes is interesting, but abstract, as if Rohr’s silver tongue has covered over the hollowness of some of those fascinating ideas.  He reminds me in some ways of Thomas Merton, whom some of you may have read, in that Merton often seems—as is generally acknowledged—to be a genius…and yet what does one actually do with anything he says?

So there are some of Rohr’s weaknesses.  But we come not to bury Rohr, but to praise him, at least from this quarter. 

In these lectures, Rohr—to my mind—captures some deep longings of men and women I’ve known, and gives some really helpful perspective.  His take on male initiation has gotten a lot of traction among some of my friends.  The idea that every boy wants to be a hero has been just central to my thinking about discipleship in Jesus ever since I heard this.  The importance of ascent and descent, of course, is the crux of his point here, and that has made a major impact on me.  So much of my life has been geared towards ascent—along with that of most everyone I know—and to hear him not devalue that, while at the same time putting it in context and offering such profound warnings about the risk of becoming “an old fool” (as opposed to “a holy fool”).  All this has really shaped me and focused me back on Paul’s comment that he knows how to have lots and how to have very little.

Carol Wimber, the widow of John Wimber who spearheaded my movement of churches, writes about how, at the end of his life, Wimber would get fewer and fewer invitations, and would often show up to groups of perhaps fifteen young people, where once he’d spoken to thousands.  She’d feel the waste of this—do these people know who this man is?  But he’d be perfectly cheerful and eager to go, saying to Carol, “I’m so pleased to talk with anyone who wants to consider how to know and follow Jesus better.”  This strikes me as a very appealing picture of Rohr’s “descent.”

His take on the importance of ascent for many women has also really resonated with me, as I’ve experienced some women, somewhat past their youth, choose to step out and take their place at the table.

Rohr says that this and his other epic teaching on this spiritual direction tool, the Enneagram (above), are not intended for anyone under 30, that they won’t know enough about themselves to employ his insights.  I was introduced to them when I was perhaps 35, so maybe I got to them just in time, but they seem invaluable to me now.  “If you don’t transform your pain, you will always transmit your pain” seems like deep—and perhaps obvious—wisdom that nonetheless was rarely stated as clearly, in my experience, before Rohr got there.

For those of you familiar with our “stage 4” rhetoric (see more under the multimedia section tab, if you’re interested), I occasionally talk with Rohr-loving friends about whether Rohr would be, under this thinking, stage 4.  On the one hand, he seems like the dictionary picture of stage 4.  If not him, who?

And yet, maybe quirkily, I still seem to see him as top of the line stage 3—with several toes firmly in stage 4’s water.  And that’s that, for all my appreciation for and love of what he brings to the table, he doesn’t seem so much a “mystic” in this sense of knowing, loving, and talking often with Jesus as he does the single most brilliant critic of institutional Catholicism alive.  But that’s just me.

So…what did you take away from these talks?

This is your brain on God / Steve Hamilton (Baltimore, MD)

Did you know that there are professionals across the country who are studying the brain science of spiritual experience?  They have taken the name "neurotheologians" - those who research in the burgeoning field of spiritual experience and the brain - and they claim that prayer can sculpt your brain.  Seriously, they claim prayer physically re-shapes your brain, and in-turn how your perceive reality.  One such "neurotheologian", Dr. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania and teaching professor of the course The Biology of Spirituality, has found that those who meditate and pray more have increased brain activity in the frontal lobe - where concentration and focus are centered according to brain scientists - while at the same time decreased activity in the parietal lobe - which is where we get our sense of orientation in time and space according to brain science.  Therefore he posits this either aids or explains our experience of prayer, and those who claim to lose track of time and space during meditative prayer.  In fact, Dr. Newberg has written a book: How God Changes Your Brain, in which he talks about the following:

• 

  Not only do prayer and spiritual practice reduce stress and anxiety, but just twelve minutes of meditation per day may slow down the aging process.

• Fundamentalism, in and of itself, is benign and can be personally beneficial, but the anger and prejudice generated by extreme beliefs can permanently damage your brain.

• Intense prayer and meditation permanently change numerous structures and functions in the brain - altering your values and the way you perceive reality.

Interesting, eh?  But here is the kicker: while these brain scientists/neurotheologians have focused most of their studies on those who pray and/or meditate for several hours every day (like monks and nuns), their research is now turning to more prayer-challenged people (like me!).  In fact, Neuroscientist Richard Davidson, of the University of Wisconsin, claims that most anyone can sculpt their brain with some experience and training and something they call neuroplasticity (brain/cortical organization, especially for the sensory systems, is often described in terms of mapping, thus, with training and experience we can re-map our brain...quick question: in faith community circles, is this what we call spiritual formation?).  "You can sculpt your brain just as you'd sculpt your muscles if you went to the gym," he says. "Our brains are continuously being sculpted, whether you like it or not, wittingly or unwittingly." 

In one recent-but-unpublished study many people - who were regular people and not monks and nuns - were very successful in cultivating a spiritual mind-set.  According to Dr. Davidson, there were detectable changes in the subjects' brains within two weeks. Two weeks! Another similar study, where employees at a high-tech firm meditated a few minutes a day over a few weeks, produced more dramatic results.  "Just two months' practice among rank amateurs led to a systematic change in both the brain as well as the immune system in more positive directions," Davidson claims that the subjects developed more antibodies to a flu virus than did their colleagues who did not meditate.

So, I have been reflecting on all this and asking myself:  what are the implications for Stage 4 Faith in terms of neurotheology, prayer and neuroplasticity?  Can spiritual formation and spiritual exercises like "listening prayer"  'form' a pathway to Stage 4 Faith?  Can anger and prejudice really damage your brain permanently?  Is Stage 4 Faith somehow just more neuro-connectors and synapses due to some witting or unwitting sculpting going on in our brains?  Is Stage 4 Faith the brain connecting with God and changing my perception of reality?  Who is doing the sculpting, me or God?  What are the implications for faith and science in this overlapping phenomenon of "neurotheology"?

Can Theology and Science Make Peace in the Age of Darwin? / Brent Henderson (Gainsville, FL)

From Dave:

Here's some more background on Brent's comment that I highlighted in Monday's post. I'll be eager to hear your thoughts!

I grew up in a small town in rural Florida in a loving family strongly committed to evangelical Christianity. Much of my teen years were spent attending the same independent evangelical church, going on short-term mission trips, singing in praise bands, and attending youth group. Over all, I’m really thankful for this upbringing (especially the loving family part), even if now I might be critical of some of it. Part of what I’d be most critical of today is the way the faith I was raised with was tightly bound with certain cultural worldviews, including conservative politics and a strong rejection of scientific and intellectual authority, especially when it came to evolution and its explanations for the history of life on earth. Among other things, I had learned that EVILution was untrue, atheistic, and had led directly to the Holocaust. I also learned a lot about ‘alternatives’ to evolution that were faithful to the Biblical narrative: evidence for a global flood, dinosaur-human co-habitation, the recent age of the earth, etc. I recall reciting some of these arguments against evolution and for Creationism forcefully to my tenth grade earth sciences teacher (who, I now think, must be a saint given the kind and patient way she responded).

Like a lot of evangelikids (I’m a linguist, I’m allowed to coin new words), I experienced quite a bit of cognitive dissonance when I got out into the world a bit. My belief in these things were certain and unchallenged until I entered college and started to learn more about science. For one, I learned that I loved it and wanted to do science for the rest of my life. I also learned that the evidence for the overall picture of the history of life and the universe that science has given us over the past couple of centuries is overwhelming. While some of the details are unknown and other parts are a little fuzzy, it is clear that the universe is at least 14 billion years old, that earth has only been around for about 4.5 of those billions, and that during that time life on earth has evolved from a few simple kinds of organisms to all the complex and varied forms of life we see today through a process of gradual evolution.

Surprisingly, unlike others I know, validating science like this never shook my faith a bit. Nor did it push me into the unreasonable position of rejecting science altogether. It simply created an exciting puzzle. I knew my faith was based on something close to the truth. And now I knew science’s conclusions were close to the truth. I think maybe I just thought that Jesus would never want me to reject any truth, and that if both of these things were ways to approach the truth, they must fit together somehow.

All that led to what has become passion interest for me. A lot of my spare time is devoting to reading about science and theology and how they can work together. I’ve read with interest the insightful works of John Polkinghorne, John Haught, Terence Nichols, Ian Barbour, Teilhard de Chardin, and others. I’ve also been delighted to see a number of Christian scientists (small ‘s’) engage this topic as well, including Darrel Falk, Ken Miller, Karl Giberson, and the new head of the National Institutes of Health and chief decoder of the human genome Francis Collins. And of course, I’ve had dozens of great conversations with students, scientists, pastors, friends, and family about this topic.

Yet at times I’ve also gotten frustrated that the general conversation on science and theology doesn’t seem to have changed much since I was a high school kid. Most evangelicals still reject evolution.  A March 2007 Newsweek poll showed 48% of Americans believe God created "humans pretty much in the present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so;” the religiously-motivated continually try to get creation ‘science’ taught in public schools through legislative means; in a few weeks there’ll be a ‘creation vs. evolution’ conference at a Baptist church not far from me in which various creationists will present evidence against evolution. No theistic evolutionists have been invited.

Perhaps just as frustrating is that many of the most thoughtful Christians I know simply don’t seem to think this is an issue that merits much attention. I commonly hear them say that whether evolution is true or not doesn’t affect one’s faith. I couldn’t disagree more. I’m convinced that seeking the truth about creation is a crucial part of seeking the truth about our place in it and about its Creator. As John Haught likes to say, we can’t think about God the same way after Darwin as we did before. Usually, I get the response that caring for the earth or fighting for social justice are just way more important issues to focus on (a point I often concede, though I’m not sure that’s the right way to compare things).

A series of lectures is starting this Monday at the Christian Studies Center here in Gainesville, FL (where I’m an assistant professor in linguistics at the University of Florida) that will focus on various questions that arise when we consider ‘Science and Worldview.’ I’m scheduled to give the second lecture, ‘Can Science and Theology Make Peace in the Age of Darwin?’ In that lecture, I hope to paint a picture of a worldview in which Christians can take their faith and the Bible seriously while also recognizing the importance and truth-seeking nature of the scientific enterprise. I have to admit, I’m a bit nervous, though I’m not sure exactly why. Perhaps I’m nervous I’ll be branded a heretic by some of the more conservative attendees? Or perhaps I’m nervous about the conversation getting dragged down into the usual arguments about the evils of evolution or its accuracy? Maybe I’m just nervous some of my colleagues will come?

But I’m interested to know what the thoughtful crowd here thinks. Why do you think this has been such a difficult conversation for Christians to have? Do you think science is at all important for faith to consider, or am I way off-base on that? Is this something you’re dealing with to? I’ll be sure to report back after the talk next week to let you know how it went.

 

 

A Little Spiritual Partnership Among Some of Us?

"At that time I, Daniel, mourned for three weeks. I ate no choice food; no meat or wine touched my lips; and I used no lotions at all until the three weeks were over."
-Daniel 10:2-3

At the Culture Center Summit, I pitched the possibility of some of us doing a joint group fast together.

Let me tell you all about it in case it grabs you.

A number of our intercessors (people who regularly pray for our church) had the strong sense that, for us as a church to take the next step towards our hopes in God, we'd need to take some spiritual steps together and not rely on whatever level of smarts or giftedness we had.

We had a good experience with this as a church several years back.  A national ministry brought tens of thousands of people together in Boston to pray God's blessing on the area.  The ministry's leader encouraged any sympathetic people in Boston to do what's sometimes called "Daniel fast" for 21 days before the event as a particularly powerful way of inviting God's blessing on and through the prayer event.  Daniel fasting is often understood (as in the book of Daniel) to be eating only fruit, vegetables and whole grains. 

I and a number of other people in our church took this man up on his encouragement, and several hundred of us went to the prayer event.  I don't think any of us who fasted were disappointed.  We all felt a great deal of faith for what God might do.

So when our intercessors passed on their sense, I had a context for what they were saying, and it was very positive.  It struck me that that sort of faith exercise would be really valuable for us as a church, if only as a reminder that we're about something more than "being a good church," that we have hopes for what God might do in and through us.  We also, like most churches, have some folks who are in real crisis, and it seemed to me that raising all of our faith (and connection to God) might have some great spillover benefits to those folks as well.  A win all around. (Clearly we wouldn't mandate this.  It would be for folks who wanted to join in.  But I think quite a lot of our people will go for it with real expectation.)

It struck me that the only thing that might make this effort even more fun would be to do it with your churches, if you're leading a church and have any interest in this.  What would happen if churches that were connected to each other, but were in cities all over the country, were to do this together?  I would definitely tell our folks about each of you and pray as a congregation for your churches and what God wanted to do in and through you in your city.  I think, for our folks at least, that would be a very motivational type of partnership.  It would be fun to share stories between churches of what God has done in each setting.

So, all to say, if this interests you enough that you'd want to learn more on behalf of your church, could you let me know, either in the comment section (though I'd need your contact info, if I don't already have it) or by emailing me at dave@bostonvineyard.org?  I'll get you whatever info we have to offer.  (We know what we'll be preaching about during the time, more or less, which I'd be happy to pass on.  I may write a manual for our folks.)  We're looking to start on Monday, November 2 and go through Sunday, November 22.  I think that previous Saturday, the 21st, we'll have a big prayer event together.  We'll most likely invite churches from around our city to join us.  There's an outside chance that another, very prominent pastor in our city would have his church join in.  I think, if that happened, a fair number of Boston area churches would join in.  (And, for those of you who know who this is, Heidi Baker will join us and preach for one of the Sundays in that stretch, which I'd hope would be very inspirational along these lines.)

Let me know!

What Do We Do When the "Crazy" Christian Position Is the Dominant One?

Hi all.  I missed you last week!  I was in the New York apartment of one of you as I tried to kickstart a novel I've had in mind.  Here's hoping it at least was kickstarted!

A couple things.  One, some of us are doing a "book club" (we're actually listening to two long talks on CD) on Richard Rohr's Men and Women: The Journey of Spiritual Transformation.  Some of you asked for a week's notice before we had the conversation.  This is your week's notice.  Unless it slips my mind, we'll do it next Monday.

As I looked at some of your comments that came in last week, among others that struck me were two from Brent.  One was on the "whatever works" post, where I think Brent and I might have a modest disagreement.  (I'd be more favorably inclined towards "whatever works" than he, and might see it both as more in the spirit both of centered set and of Jesus' ministry on earth than he does.)  But the second was on the "How should we think about high-profile Christian crazy people?" post.  Brent posed this provocative question.

Sorry so late to the conversation. But what about when the 'crazy' position is the dominant one? I'm in the sciences at an academic institution. Polls show that most self-identified Christians in the US reject neo-Darwinian accounts of life's history and about half think the earth is less than 10K years old.

For anyone who knows anything about science, that's just crazy, an extremist rejection of science. Yet that's the dominant position.

Does the fact that's its such a widespread belief change our reaction (as opposed to how we'd react to the very marginal views of these guys above)? Does it still work to roll our eyes and utter 'idiots?' It's a tough problem for me personally. It seems that in order to be intellectually honest, what I have to do is, rather than pointing out the marginality of the person making the comment, I have to point out the marginality of myself. I have to separate myself from the majority of American Christians. Now I don't mind doing that so much, but it is a rather odd position to be in from the perspective of non-believers.

What are your thoughts?

Wiley Pitman and Five Notes that Changed the World / Crispin Schroeder (Kenner, Louisiana)

Here is a post Crispin Schroeder pubilshed on his blog "My Life as Wrestler" that he wanted to share with the rest of us. 

Several years ago I watched the movie “Ray”, a biopic on the life of Ray Charles. There was one scene from the movie that really struck me as a musician. Ray Charles as a child of about three-years-old lived next door to a café and general store owned by Wiley Pittman who happened to be a great boogie-woogie piano player. In those earliest years of Ray’s life, before he had become totally blind he would drop by Pittman’s not just to listen to him practice but because he wanted to learn how to play the piano himself. The scene from the movie that really got me was how Wiley Pittman was able to teach Ray to begin playing the blues by introducing him to the pentatonic scale – five notes which provide the foundation for many styles of music from around the world from Chinese to Celtic to Blues to Country. The scene really connected with me because it reminded me of how those same 5 basic notes of the Blues scale changed my musical life as well.

I started taking piano lessons when I was around eight years old, but for the most part the first five years of piano lessons failed to really engage my heart. But one day, when I was probably about fourteen years old, I walked into a local music store to look at keyboards. That keyboard salesman will never know how, in trying to sell me a keyboard, he changed my life by introducing me to the very same pentatonic scale which got Ray Charles going as a child. Up to that day I had known how to play the piano a bit and I was even beginning to write some of my own songs but the simplicity of pentatonic scale brought it all together in a way that piano lessons never did. It connected the dots to what I had been stumbling on intuitively. All of the sudden a whole new world of musical possibilities opened up for me.

Within weeks I was writing blues songs and beginning to figure out some blues licks. Over the next four years that followed, my musicianship grew exponentially in all kinds of ways. It wasn’t that I had learned nothing in those few years of piano lessons. It’s just that I got more out of that few minutes with a keyboard salesman because it connected with my heart and my mind in a way that my lessons never could—in a way that changed the course of my life. Had I not had that encounter at that point in my life I might not have pursued music the way that I had and my life would have certainly taken a different path.

The Word Became Flesh
John 1:14 (The Message) says,

14The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.

This is a scripture that is no doubt familiar to many Christians but one which doesn’t seem to inform how many Christians practice their faith much. In this simple verse John kicks his gospel off with the revolutionary truth of the incarnation—God loved us not from a distance as Bette Midler once sang but by entering our neighborhood, our world, the place where we live, as one of us... as a human, with everything that goes with being a human—hunger, physical limitations, morning breath, and so on.

Throughout the gospels the Pharisees seem mainly concerned with the trivialities of following the law, with how to be righteous, with who’s in and who’s out, with religious rituals, and with the fine points of doctrine. But Jesus, on the other hand, didn’t waste time on long theological statements or religious platitudes, rather he related the realities of the kingdom to things that people encountered in everyday life: “The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed”… “There once was a guy who owned a vineyard”… “A shepherd lost a sheep”… “A son asked for his dad’s inheritance”. It wasn’t that Jesus was incapable of debating religion with the most intellectual minds of his day but to do that would have missed the point of why he came. The reality is that he loved us enough to not only enter our world as a human but to engage us on human terms, in familiar language and in the everyday places where everyday people live whether at a wedding feast or on a fishing boat or at a party with tax collectors. While the Pharisees were busy avoiding people and making it hard for others to be a part of their “club”, Jesus was busy meeting people right where they were with the good news that no matter their background, social status, race, or moral state they could enter into the kingdom of God.

What might it look like for us to enter into the world of others and to relate to them on their terms?

I read something by Henri Nouwen once that I think gives us a great starting point:

“From experience you know those who care for you become present to you. When they listen, they listen to you. When they speak they speak to you. Their presence is a healing presence because they accept you on your terms, and they encourage you on your terms, and they encourage you to take your own life seriously.”

Have you ever known someone that embodied the above quote? I think we all have at one time or another. When you feel like someone is genuinely interested in you, and sincerely listening to you, and right there with you (as opposed to somewhere else in their mind) you feel like they care. Why? Because in a very simple way they are entering into your world and meeting you right where you are.

Let’s look back at Ray Charles for a moment. Wiley Pittman provides us with a good analogy of what it looks like to enter into the world of another and help them understand something in a very simple way. Had Wiley Pittman not tried to show little Ray music in a way that he could get it, or had he just been too bothered by the pestering of that little kid wanting to bang on his piano and interrupt his practice, our world would have missed out on the amazing treasure of Ray Charles’ music. But Wiley Pittman instead met him right where he was with a simple idea… simple enough for a three-year-old… five notes that changed his life.

As Christians we are faced with a couple of options: Like the Pharisees we can make it harder for people to grasp what God is about with confusing language, customs, and traditions, or we can go the way of Jesus and connect with people right where they are—listening more than speaking, meeting folks on their terms, being present when we are with them, and being deliberately simple when talking about God.

Perhaps our biggest enemy is our own experience. Sometimes we think because of our experience with God that we have somehow become experts and like the Pharisees we can so easily begin talking like experts and alienating the very folks we want to encounter God. Jesus once encouraged his disciples to become like children for “such is the kingdom of Heaven”. While Wiley Pittman was a seasoned piano player of many years he had not lost the ability in his experience on the piano to connect with a child. Perhaps this is a bit of the childlike quality Jesus is calling us to.

Survey Results -- CCS 2009

Note from Dan: Hi Friends! I wanted to let you all know that Dave is on a writing retreat this week and will be back on Monday. With that said, I'm looking for new topics and guests posts from people like you. 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.

In the meantime, I thought it would be fun to share with all of you some statistics and feedback from this year's Culture Center Summit 2009. We had 55 people register for this year's conference and a total of about 75 people present over the course of the entire weekend (including speakers and staff). This first set of statistics is based upon the 55 who registered.

 

Out of these people we had 10 different states and 18 different churches represented (not bad). Feel free to download this pdf for a more in depth breakdown including male/female ratios.

After the conference, an online survey was sent out to all the participants and 24 people responded (anonymous). From that feedback, it looks like Charles Park's talk "Lets Fish the Blue Ocean" was the conference favorite. (Keep your eyes open for possible downloads in the near future.) The other favorite of the conference was Dave Schmelzer's 150+ page manual titled "Culture Center Churches."

From the open ended questions, here is a bit of the feedback you guys gave us:

Praise:

"I enjoyed being at the conference. Connecting with folks was the best, and it was encouraging to see the number of folks grappling with these issues..."

"As my scores above indicate, I thought the conference was fantastic.  I brought a young worship leader from my church and she came back filled with enthusiasm and ideas.  So great job presenting the content in a way that was engaging for folks who have been part of this conversation for awhile and for newcomers."

"It was awesome! Just keep it coming."

"I got a lot from the Q&A with Dave on Sunday.  A big thanks to him for staying to talk with us on his birthday!   The one thing that really clicked for me during the Q&A was the respect that Dave has for all people.  How he sees that people that don't follow Jesus by name, can have something of the love of Jesus to teach him.  I think the explanation was something like we all have lots of arrows (various aspects of our lives) pointing in various direction towards/away from Jesus.  People in our lives can influence us to be more like Jesus - e.g. good to the environment - even if they wouldn't say they were following Jesus.  This really 'clicked' 'for me and drove home the bounded set vs centered set in a way that I hadn't realized before.  Although I 'bought into' centered set from the first time I heard it - I've got lots of baggage about 'We' vs 'They' and what 'They' don't have.  Dave's explanation was so freeing and rings true for me.  I have heard so much bounded set talk in the past and now I'm realizing more and more that that is so relationally destructive/isolating/disrespectful to people 'outside the church'.  I have a lot to unlearn!"

"...I feel like I met more people that I feel closer too from other churches in the area and around the country, the smaller group allowed for more of that, as well as the longer break times.  I also enjoyed eating out more than having food in.  It really allowed us to get away, enjoy North Cambridge, which has a lot to offer, walk around, beautiful architecture, music in Davis, etc.  You could get away if you wanted to, run an errand or just hang out with new friends.  I also was able to spend more time with the leaders of the church more than I have in past events/conferences, I think again b/c of the size."

"What I enjoyed most was the question and answer. It was very informative and something that my church doesn't regularly do. We talked as a group for a long time on that first track and it was really refreshing. I need more of that."

"Extremely helpful having a place to process, ask questions, hear from others, pray."

"The pastor track was great. It felt like we built a real community by having space to talk about this approach to faith and church that isn't happening anywhere else..."

"Conference was great... I loved how you provided snacks at every opportunity. That's classy!"

"...I thought the long breaks inbetween were great. We really got to bond with new people and have great conversations, eat good food and not feel rushed."

Criticism:

"In my opinion it was far too expensive for what we got... For $25 I would have no complaints whatsoever."

"...Even with the break-out sessions, the conference felt a little "top-down" to me--more like a seminar than a true gathering of mutual partners."

"I'd like to see the 'production values' (for lack of a better term) match the awesome content. Room set-up/ sound/projection, timeliness, etc."

"I enjoyed the track [Laity] because I enjoyed hearing from some great people. The material itself was though was mostly not-so-new for those of us from the Boston Vineyard..."

"I enjoyed hearing and reading what was happening at the Boston Vineyard, but I wonder both for cross pollenization and so we visitors don't just leech from the Boston Vineyard, if we could hear more how others are using the "goods" and what have they come up with (questions, successes, failures, etc.). Maybe that will naturally happen over time."

Suggestions:

"I was very helped by the LGBT lunch and wished we had lots  more time to talk.  Give it a whole session next year? Thank you so much!"

"More Q&A time in the larger group after talks, so we can hear the questions raised by people in tracks other than ours."

"...perhaps some more ministry time would be helpful"

"Ask for suggested topics of discussion, pre-CCS."

"...maybe have more of an organized set of things to chat about." [in reference to the Worship & Arts track]

"Perhaps more time to debrief at the end of of each session [track] would be helpful"

For those of you who went to the conference, what do you think about all of this? What other thoughts would you like to add? For those of you who couldn't make it, what would you like to see at the conference next year?

Forgiveness and Healing/ Otto von Wachter

I want to share with you some thoughts about forgiveness and healing.  But let me start by telling you a story from my own life.

About eight years ago I was having a conversation with a coworker, I think he was an evangelical Christian.  Somehow we got on the topic of evolution.  I told him that I believed in God, but that I believed the description in Genesis was symbolic, and that God didn't create the world in seven days.  I forgot exactly how the conversation went, but you can probably guess the general thrust of it, because you've probably either had a similar conversation about Biblical reliability, or at least you've overheard one.  So anyway, I think he probably realized he wasn't going to get anywhere with me because I was pretty scientific, and then he said something like "I hope you come around and are saved, but from my experience people like you can't be saved".  With that he ended the conversation.  I remember this conversation left me a little in shock, because I always thought I was basically good and felt God loved me (despite that I didn't have a very close, "chatty" relationship with God).  But this conversation planted a doubt of whether there was something about me (not people in general, but me specifically) that was fundamentally bad and hopeless.  I never could believe that God would hate some people so, that he would reject them or abandon them.  But by this point in life I had seen enough bad things, bad people.  Maybe it was true, that some people who were just evil and hopeless.  And who was to say I was one of them?

Even though I was still seeking God at that time, I think from this point I felt a big dividing wall between me and "biblical" Christians.  I would not have admitted this if you asked me, and I didn't think it consciously, but on some level I felt these kind of Christians were my enemies.  So even when I joined a Vineyard church in Boston and got to know some Christians better and was even friends with them, I was aware of this dividing wall between me (as a secular/scientific person) and these wierd Christians.

Back to that unpleasant conversation eight years ago, I realize now that his reaction was just what he learned from his faith community. I feel that whoever his teachers were, they didn't teach him any love for non-Christians, only fear.  Even though he was "saved", I think he was influenced by evil when we he was arguing with me, and wasn't even aware of it.  Or then again, maybe I was influenced by evil (or we both were).  After all, I was the one who interpreted what he said as a condemnation.  It was the enemy who planted the doubt in my mind that God hated me and rejected me, it was not my coworker who said that. He said "I hope you are saved...". He in fact hoped something good for me!

But regardless of what he meant, I felt really judged by him.  And I didn't consciously hold anything against him.  If anyone would have asked me if I forgave him I would have said of course. In fact, during a church "transformation weekend" I went to, he was one of the people that I chose to forgive at that time.  But if I'm REALLY straight with myself, even to this day I have not fully forgiven him.  I still think he's an arrogant jerk.  However I also feel compassion for him when I realize that this behavior is just what he learned from his church.  Jesus once pointed out that "a son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the father doing".  When I observe peoples' behaviors, I see how true this is.  This applies not only to our parents, but other "father" figures such as mentors, spiritual teachers, bosses, etc.  And it applies to all learned behavior, the good and the bad. I think that is why Jesus, when he saw the horrible attitude the Pharisees had towards him, said "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do."

I know my unforgiveness of this guy is totally petty and self-indulgent.  But I wanted to give this example because it shows just how hard and ungenerous I can be over something small that happened a long time ago. And, I know he's not the only person that I have not forgiven.  Over the last decade several other situations come to mind right away where I have held on to unforgiveness.  So what can I do?  First, I think I can again declare forgiveness for whoever I have a grievance against.  That's the first step, and I believe there's power in that, but where the rubber meets the road is choosing forgiveness each moment.  I can only choose forgiveness one day at a time.  At any given moment, when I'm hurting, in a bad mood, or whatever, I can either choose forgiveness, or hold on to my pain. 

I wish I could just forgive, and done.  There seems to be a myth that this is how forgiveness works.  But that's not the case in my experience.  Maybe we have this myth because we don't want to look really closely in the mirror. We don't want to admit that we're not very good at forgiving at all.  And we really don't even want to be good at it, because the whole thing is so messy and scary.  Sometimes, if we're honest with ourselves, we need to confront the person who hurt us.  And sometimes not.  But either way, we need to be really honest with ourselves and with others.  This is what living a life of forgiveness requires.  And those things, honesty and confrontation, can be scary.  Sometimes it's easier to skip the whole process, so we comfort ourselves with the words "I forgive him/her/them", and don't bother to look any deeper. 

Now, just because I say I can't forgive once and for all, that's not to say that I believe that true, permanent forgiveness doesn't exist.  I just don't think it's something I can do.  Maybe it's a grace of God.  Time sometimes helps too.  But I don't quite believe the saying that "time heals all wounds".  It's God who heals all wounds, and God uses time.  Maybe the less we trust God and the less faith we have, the more time is needed.   And, of course, we're free to choose to hold on to our pain as long as we want.  But instead, if we choose to trust God, if we separate ourselves from every bad and evil thought, and if we go to God and let him know our heart-felt wish for healing, then He will do it!  Sometimes it takes longer than we want, but one day we wake up, and the wound is completely gone, completely healed.  This is the miracle of healing.  We can see it at work in our bodies, and all over nature.  And it's the same with our soul.  God designed both our body and our soul to heal.

So, friends, I wish you all forgiveness and healing in all your relationships!  The first step is to look inside yourself and find out where you need healing.  Ask God for wisdom.  And feel free to reply to to this post and share what comes up for you, and where you are choosing forgiveness.

Do Churches, Strangely, Shut Down Peoples' Callings in God?

Thanks for your comments on the last two posts.  I remain perhaps irrationally interested particularly in the "whatever works" line of thinking and I'd think we'll return there sometime soon.  And, as I hoped for, I actually was really helped by your collective counsel on the "Christian crazy people" post.  I've added a few comments there if it's of interest.

That said, onto today's topic!

I ran across a thinker the other day who argues that callings and passions come early for most people, maybe even as far back as when we're toddlers.  As toddlers, we're in total touch with our passions of the moment. 

What messes up this admirable ability to be in touch with our deep passions are voices of adults telling us what we should feel and want.  Clearly these voices are also very much needed.  Parents and teachers do, of course, need to socialize and guide all of us to a great degree.  But this writer feels that one not-minor downside is that they muddy the waters of our actual heart desires.  (I.e., in an extreme case, telling us that the only acceptable profession for us to go into is medicine.  Or some such thing.  He'd say that that's an extreme case, but that this happens subtly in every family.)

As a result, we often lose some of the ability to own our lives.  If we're living out a script put in place by others, if only subconsciously, is it any wonder that we fight against our lives to some degree?

Clearly  a major villain in this perspective would be churches.  Because if there's one thing churches do, it's tell people what they should want and how they should behave.  Which, if this has anything to say to us, could ironically mean that a major barrier to people fulfilling their callings in God is their church! 

What do you think?  Does that resonate with you or is this guy full of hooey?  (On my end, at this point of my life, I'm not aware of any way that any church has put any barrier between me and my sense of calling.  But I could, of course, be either (a) out of touch or (b) not representative or (c) both.)

Is this guy onto something?

"Whatever Works" vs. "Today is the Day of Salvation"

So, back to our topic of late last week (and we may well pick up the Christian-crazy-people thread soon too), we've established that the average American today is a "syncretist" (meaning that they--maybe we!--incorporate whatever works from us from whatever religious source we can find, whatever "religion" we call ourselves).  I made this comment, which Jeff followed up on.

But it doesn't seem to me to be a loss for the cause of Jesus that Americans currently profile as syncretists rather than conformist civil religionists.

He comments:

I think you've put your finger on one of the central distinctions of your point of view from mainstream evangelicalism. I think you are absolutely right.

Classic evangelistic approaches have been beating their heads against the brick wall of syncretism for decades.

And he promises us a guest post soon on this, with some focus on CS Lewis.  I can't wait!

Caleb then pushes back, putting his finger on , I think, exactly the right question.  He also has put more thought into this comment since he posted it, but I wonder if what follows will at least frame things for us.

"Whatever works" is, to me, a troubling criterion because it makes no accounting of assessment over time. Clearly there are things that work for a while, but end up powerfully diverting one's life in an ultimately negative direction. To use a biblical metaphor, sin indeed fulfills temporarily. But then what?

Dave's post says that this is the perfect place for a person to end up...finding that the other stuff that they have tried has not worked, and that there, in that place, Jesus can meet them.

Similarly, philosophical pragmatism (that great American intellectual movement developed in Cambridge, Massachusetts by such luminaries as Charles Peirce and William James) would say that whatever works is fine, as long as when something ceases to work that the doer of it immediately begins to search for a better answer wherever it may be found.

But i think that there is an problem here, namely that people can really really hurt themselves on their way to figuring out what works. A pragmatic / experimental approach to seeking faith works, as long as the people proclaiming "Give Jesus a try, when you feel like it" are willing to watch as their friends and neighbors suffer and die under the crushing weight of their own attempts to locate what "works." Some seem to be luckier than others on that journey. An amazing place to go to consider the potential outworkings of this approach is Andy Marin's Love Is An Orientation that has been recommended often on this blog. Marin tells stories of having seen Jesus give amazing new hope to some people because he didn't do some kind of evangelistic "hard pitch," (158-160) but he also tells stories of how some of his other friends suffered and died of debilitating diseases because no one urgently/effectively communicated with them about their belovedness (101-106)

In short, I worry a bit about a lack of urgency in the telling of the story of God as a "whatever works" phenomenon. That said, I am all for the centered-set and I appreciate that there are many ways to scare off a secularist with urgency. So, this is a tension.

I think that this could be addressed in part by thinking very carefully about the process of institutionalization for centered-set types of churches.

He then makes a clarification:

Allow me to clarify one thing. I wrote:

"In short, I worry a bit about a lack of urgency in the telling of the story of God as a "whatever works" phenomenon. That said, I am all for the centered-set and I appreciate that there are many ways to scare off a secularist with urgency."

I think it is important to mention that I too am often scared off by urgency. A "hard-pitch" on almost anything ranges from ineffective to positively negative in my mind. In this respect, as in hundreds of others, I deeply identify with secular skepticism.

The only way that an urgent argument has traction for me is when I see it grounded in something else that is really wonderful. Even then, I am in no sense already convinced, but it opens a door in the realm of dialogical possibility. Hence my thoughts on institutionalization.

How do you make sense of this tension?  (If you find any tension at all?)  On the one hand, people's lives are their own business and they will be accountable to God--if you believe in such things--themselves on judgment day.  If we've, say, at least run Jesus by our friends with as winsome an approach as we can, perhaps we can trust God to take them to a place of openness further on down the road when, perhaps, their syncretistic approach to life has let them down.

On the other hand, they could die tonight.  Hence the urgency we see in scripture that "today is the day of salvation."  And clearly, I'd think in all approaches we'd want a sense of the urgency of this issue.  This blog and the organization it's representing wouldn't exist without believing in that urgency.

20th century evangelicalism has largely encouraged an unrelenting hard sell towards our friends about the importance of changing their views about Jesus this instant.  That, by and large, hasn't worked as the century transitioned into the new century.  There's lots in this stream of posts over the last week that, I think, might explain why that's so.

But, enough of me: How do YOU navigate the tension (if any) between "whatever works" and "today is the day of salvation?"

How Should We Think about High-Profile Christian Crazy People?

So we were all sort of finding our way with this last stream of our conversation, stemming from Lisa Miller's "We Are All Hindus Now" article.  But I'm pretty interested in where we've landed (note the--at this point few, but really provocative--comments on my post on this on Friday).  So I'll probably steer us back there tomorrow to see if we can actually find out and pursue whatever this thread is.

But for today it was too irresistible to throw a couple of links your way and to ask you how you respond when you hear about Christians in the news who make you wish you were, say, Buddhist. 

Facebook is helpful for this.  I have churchgoing friends who post links to stories that make them shake their heads in shame.  And I have some awesome atheist Facebook friends who also helpfully find links to stories about church people whom most thoughtful people would regard as...extremists?  Lunatics?  Dangerous people?

Let me offer two links to cases in point.  I'm sure Dan will give us a pretty display here.  But here are two links to stories about pastors--in one case a former high-ranking Southern Baptist official--who are going public with their appeal that we pray that President Obama would die.  Take a look and then we'll keep talking.

Southern Baptist extremist

Arizona pastor extremist

I was interested to read the comments page on the Baptist story.  Would this draw like-minded people who agree with this guy?  But, happily, no.  Everyone I read--as I write this--on the comment page regards this man as a dangerous person and their only critique is why the top Southern Baptist leaders haven't censured this guy.  So it's nice to know that, in the Baptist-article-commenting-world, this man is on an island.

As is commonly true, I don't have anything profound to say about this, except perhaps to acknowledge that this is not a minor reality for each of us and all of our friends who are trying with some seriousness to follow Jesus.  For the rest of our lives, stories like these will be brought to our attention, often by our secular friends.  So this qualifies as "a category"--responding to stories of "Christian" extremism.

What's your strategy for when that happens?  Do you just quickly denounce the extremist?  Do you pray anything in particular?  Do you feel a need to identify with them as a fellow Christian even as you bemoan their craziness?  Do you apologize to the secularist who brought this story to you in some sort of identificational repentance?  Mentor us, oh awesome blog reader!  What should we do when we are alerted to stories of Christian crazy people?

(And perhaps some of you will respond: These people on the links you gave us are crazy...how?  But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

Newsweek and the Deeper Magic

Thanks for the thoughts on the Newsweek article.  I have some thoughts, though likely not enough to qualify as an actual "thought."

While it might be obvious that we're all syncretists, I'm more interested in what the implications of that are. 

I'm not persuaded we all believe that all religions say the same thing (which would be classic relativism).  It seems to me that Miller is more saying that we all, as some of you pointed out, pull together a hodgepodge of things in the spirit of "whatever works."  And I can wonder if one way to look at that is to agree.  Indeed--whatever works is a wise way to live. 

But, perhaps in the spirit of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, there's a "deeper magic" at work.  My take is that, in the end, only Jesus "works" to the level we're hoping for.  Only Jesus can address the actual stakes of our lives, the actual hurts and hopes, the actual need for connection and relationship.  So, if that's true, then whatever works is awesome--insofar as it goes.  Our role, then, would not be to critique most anything in anyone's syncretistic world, but to say "Tell me more about what you're getting out of that.  Why do you like it?  What's appealing to you?" 

There are limits, to be sure.  The biblical worldview acknowledges helpful spirits and destructive spirits.  If it seems to us that our syncretistic friend is receiving benefits from the dark side from their current pragmatic strategy, well, depending on our relationship, one could imagine bringing that up.  Or not.  They may just need to learn their own lessons. 

But it doesn't seem to me to be a loss for the cause of Jesus that Americans currently profile as syncretists rather than conformist civil religionists.  At worst, it's a wash.  At best, it says that Americans are increasingly free to actually try to meet actual needs they're feeling.  And it seems to me that Jesus is all about meeting needs. 

I nonetheless do think I'll hope to be buried rather than cremated (pass that on if I meet a sudden demise). 

We Are All Hindus Now

Ryan NYC, from Brooklyn, passed on this article from Newsweek.  Take a look at it, and I’ll throw some questions your way at the end.

 

We Are All Hindus Now

By Lisa Miller | NEWSWEEK

Published Aug 15, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Aug 31, 2009

America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation founded by Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of us continue to identify as Christian (still, that's the lowest percentage in American history). Of course, we are not a Hindu—or Muslim, or Jewish, or Wiccan—nation, either. A million-plus Hindus live in the United States, a fraction of the billion who live on Earth. But recent poll data show that conceptually, at least, we are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity.

The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: "Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, yoga practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me."

Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life"—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing. Thirty percent of Americans call themselves "spiritual, not religious," according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up from 24 percent in 2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has long framed the American propensity for "the divine-deli-cafeteria religion" as "very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You're not picking and choosing from different religions, because they're all the same," he says. "It isn't about orthodoxy. It's about whatever works. If going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works, great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat works, that's great, too."

Then there's the question of what happens when you die. Christians traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together they comprise the "self," and that at the end of time they will be reunited in the Resurrection. You need both, in other words, and you need them forever. Hindus believe no such thing. At death, the body burns on a pyre, while the spirit—where identity resides—escapes. In reincarnation, central to Hinduism, selves come back to earth again and again in different bodies. So here is another way in which Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24 percent of Americans say they believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008 Harris poll. So agnostic are we about the ultimate fates of our bodies that we're burning them—like Hindus—after death. More than a third of Americans now choose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North America, up from 6 percent in 1975. "I do think the more spiritual role of religion tends to deemphasize some of the more starkly literal interpretations of the Resurrection," agrees Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion at Harvard. So let us all say "om."

Back to Dave:

So how does this strike you?  I think classic modernist evangelicalism would regard it as a travesty.  Who are these so-called “Christians” who are so syncretistic (a high-flown word meaning “who dabble in religion from many sources”)?  What are they being taught!? 

And that may well be the right response, don’t get me wrong.

I can wonder if a “Jesus, not religion” approach would take this more charitably and see it as an opportunity. 

What’s your response to Miller’s “We are all Hindus now” hypothesis?