Not The Religious Type

Have You Been Served Even by Bad Spiritual Leaders?/ Crispin Schroeder

Since I have been a pastor I have heard so many discouraging stories from people in my congregation recounting issues with former pastors concerning moral failure, legalism, abuse of power and so on.  I have to admit that after hearing so many stories like these that I have at times begun to feel very scared that I might somehow become another one of these pastors that will bring further hurt into the lives of these believers.   Not too long ago I was discussing this fear with a friend of mine who is a counselor.   He asked me to reflect on the some of the bad experiences I’ve had with folks in ministry, whether pastors, or other ministers that I had looked up to who had fallen from grace.  The question he then posed was what difference it had ultimately made in my faith.  The truth is that as long as I have kept my heart open to God’s work, He has actually used even bad pastors to work his purposes into my life.  Looking back I believe that had I not had some of those very difficult experiences with folks in ministry early on in my faith I would not be where I am today.

["corrupt pastors" image taken from the atheist blog "Deep Thoughts"]

In the end I take comfort in the words of Jesus, “My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).  I am sure as my journey continues, now as a pastor myself, that I will be considered by some to be a bad pastor (that is likely the case even now).  While I hope I will never fall into sexual immorality, or become an abusive leader, I know that at my best I will still end up hurting some people along the way.  While I will endeavor to be a good pastor my hope is that I can lead people to know the one true Pastor and Shepherd and that even when I do stupid or hurtful things that folks will listen to and follow Him.  I trust this will be the case because it has been true in my own journey.  Though human pastors have failed me, though people in ministry have let me down, one Shepherd has been leading me, guiding me, and protecting me through it all.

5th Podcast: Dave & Carl Medearis

Note from Dan: Round 5 of the Blue Ocean podcasts is an interview with Carl Medearis. Carl is an international expert in the field of Arab-American and Muslim-Christian relations. He is also the author of the oft mentioned book on this blog Muslims, Christians and Jesus and his most recent book Speaking of Jesus: The Art of Not-Evangelism.

 

 

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Carl's Profile (taken from carlmedearis.com):

Carl Medearis is an international expert in the field of Arab-American and Muslim-Christian relations.

He acts as a catalyst for a number of current movements in the Middle East to promote peace-making, as well as cultural, political and religious dialog leading toward reconciliation. He is the author of the acclaimed book on these issues, Muslims, Christians and Jesus.

Carl, his wife Chris, and three kids lived in Beirut, Lebanon for 12 years. Through their unique and strategic approach around the Arab world, they encouraged university students, business professionals and political leaders to live their lives by the principles and teachings of Jesus in order to change their societies and nations.

Today Carl spends much of his time working with leaders both in the West and in the Arab world with the hope of seeing the Arab Middle East and the West experience full and fruitful relationships through the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

How Important Is It to You to Figure Out "Biblical Manhood and Womanhood?"

I can't tell you how much I loved Bill's post on Mark Driscoll.  I read it on Bill's facebook feed and found it good on about twelve levels.  I learned a bit about Driscoll.  (I'm sure it's to my discredit that I haven't followed Driscoll's career or evidently-provocative statements.)  I learned more about Bill.   I got taken into his response to Driscoll (I was right there with him, almost like it was a good movie, as I imagined the beatdown). And then he doubled back and made us all complicit with him by helping me realize the post was more about him (and us?) than Driscoll.  To quote the Guinness ads: Brilliant!

As I read the lively responses (and got emailed a few more), I had a shocking additional realization.  Evidently I don't care much about something that many of you do care about.  I don't really ever think about manliness and womanliness.  I do think about following Jesus, as either a man or a woman.  But reading many of your fascinating thoughts on how the church either overpromotes or devalues, say, "being a real man," I found myself strangely unmoved.  Maybe it's personal to me, but I can't remember ever taking cues on my manhood from anything I ever heard in a sermon.  Not a single thing--either to be more macho or more sensitive.  I do think along the lines of being true to God's calling over my life, which would require some risk and boldness (macho!) even as I learned to love my wife and kids and be as good a friend as I could pull off (sensitive!).  Of course.

The Problem is Human, Not Cultural/ Vince Brackett

Have you come across church critiques like this one I was pointed toward a little while back?

"To say that the service was religiously ‘dumbed down’ is not quite right. In fact, I wish that were the case, since the goal of comprehension sometimes demands that complex ideas be simplified. No, it seemed rather that the presentation aimed at finding a theological and cultural lowest common denominator in order to attract and engage the greatest number of people. As a result, there was no need to be a Christian to understand most everything that was said or sung."

This was from a recent article for a Christian magazine after a long, not-at-all-subtly subjective description of a contemporary worship service.  The description was full of allegations of consumeristic and shallow faith.  This is a critique I hear all the time--that churches are “giving in to wider culture” or “secularizing” to be more appealing to more people and compromising true Christianity--and it’s one that confuses me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got no problem coming down hard on faith that is too consumeristic or shallow if there is good reason (though I’m not always entirely sure what is meant by the oft-thrown around “consumeristic” tag).  The problem I have is the assumption that degrading forces like consumerism and shallowness are always the negative influence of wider culture or secular people.  It is a false dualism, I think, to paint wider culture as by definition destitute and Christian culture as originally pure but eternally under attack from the wider culture.  This blog is a testament to the fact there is plenty in secular literature, pop culture, sociology, and philosophy that can powerfully point many people toward Jesus.  There is also plenty that doesn’t point people toward Jesus, but the wholesale writing-off of wider secular culture is a straw man argument.

What if the real invading force (the “worldly” force in the Bible) is not cultural, but human?  Yes, wider culture in America is consumeristic and shallow and prefers the easy way out and blah, blah, blah, but, you know, the Stage 1 pagan peoples of Ancient Israel’s time who tried to manipulate their gods with rituals could in some ways be described as those things too… so what else is new?  The great task is not to fight a culture, but to fight the fundamentally unhelpful tendencies inside all of us.  We all can tend toward consumerism or shallowness, whether secular, Christian, or otherwise.

Seeking to Talk about "Spiritual Gifts" in a Secualr Context/ Steve Hamilton

Dave's recent post on the Holy Spirit reminded me of something that happened here recently.  One of my most secular friends brought up "spiritual gifts" the other day in conversation - how it exactly came up I can't quite recall because it is rather an odd topic for this bunch - and as the sarcasm and ridicule died down after a bit, they turned to me and wondered what their token Christian thought.  So, pausing briefly - because I wasn't sure just how to enter into it - I thought I'd just go for it! I began speaking of my own experience in this type of thing regarding the Holy Spirit - as speaking my own experience and seeking to remove all Christianese from my conversation typically gets a hearing in this crowd.  I first described - in a well-received manner - spiritual gifts as they were described to me in the Wimber-esque way of them being like a tool box that always has the right tool for the right situation, if you look in the tool box.  Being mostly men who have experience with weekend projects and credit accouints with Home Depot, they could definitely identify with "getting the right tool for the job."  In the midst of my own ramblings about my understanding and my own experience, I was groping for metaphors that they might be able to grab a hold of, and I think together we found a couple that seemed to take-hold of their imagination.
 

 

Intuition/Insight - I also described how some times, when I focus and listen to someone, in some way I "understand" even more than what they are saying and as we talk, they say, "How did you know that!?" because sometimes I "know" stuff.  We batted this one around a lot, and of course they were like, "You're a mind-reader!", or "You have clairvoyance?" but as they had me describe it more and more they seemed to just settle for the metaphor of intuition or insight, which seemed to mean to them perceiving deeply or a larger, immediate comprehension of what people are saying underneath what they are saying. 

 

On Mark Driscoll and My Own Struggles With Manliness/ Bill Sergott

Note from Dan: This is a reposting of Bill's original post on his blog Heresy of the Month.

I'm struggling today.  If you have followed this blog, you know that I have been working on anger issues and ADHD stuff.  As I am trying to turn away from being anger-driven, I have seen, with painful clarity, how I have wielded anger like a club, destroying all in my path who would dare to attack me.  I have also realized, as I've turned away from that approach, that being "Angry/Dangerous Guy" was all based in my insecurity.  It was my attempt to stomp my foot and demand to be taken seriously.  As I have gotten more defined, releasing anger, I have actually grown in my authority and power.  I am taken much more seriously now, then I ever was while demanding it.

All that being said, I am struggling with how to respond to the latest antics of a fellow pastor.  Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, recently posted on his fan page: “So, what story do you have about the most effeminate anatomically male worship leader you’ve ever personally witnessed?”

 

Now, Mark Driscoll has a habit of making horrifically misogynistic and bullying statements.  He has hundreds of thousands of followers, and is very public.  He is often called "The Cussing Pastor", and he refers to himself as a "Street Fighter".  He is the angry, tough guy I am working so hard to eradicate in myself.  He is unapologetically that.  He even tries to sanctify it, by twisting Scripture to say that God wants men to be that way.  Here is another quote from his blog:

“I’ve gotta think these guys [David, Paul, John the Baptist] were dudes. Heterosexual, win a fight, punch you in the nose dudes. And the problem in the church today is it’s just a bunch of nice, soft, tender, chick-ified church boys. Sixty percent of Christians are chicks. And the forty percent that are dudes are still sort of chicks. I mean, it’s just sad. When you walk in, it’s sea foam green and fuchsia and lemon yellow. The whole architecture is feminine and the preacher is kind of feminine and the music is kind of emotional and feminine and we’re looking around going, ‘How come we’re not innovative?’ It’s because all the innovative dudes are at home watching football.”

Does the World Need the Holy Spirit Even More than (Take This in the Right Way) Jesus?

So Grace and I were talking to a woman the other day (along with one of you) who was completely intrigued that she might be able to get to know God the way one gets to know a friend.  She'd never heard of such a thing.  How would she get started?

Grace started describing her own journey of learning to hear God's voice and how that led to her discovering the Holy Spirit.  The woman was completely on board.  Blundering into the conversation, I mentioned that the woman might enjoy a structured look at exactly this question by way of the Seek Course, though I said that I should mention that Seek looks at these questions from a perspective of Jesus.  That proved to be a non-starter and, after an appropriately uncomfortable pause, the woman turned back to Grace, the person who was actually offering her useful spiritual counsel.

This got Grace and me thinking.  I've been reading my friend Carl Medearis' engaging new book Speaking of Jesus (our next podcast will be with Carl), and Carl pummels away at one main point--which I'm sure I'll clumsily summarize as: Christianity stinks and is not worth defending in any way, but Jesus has something to offer anyone on earth.  But our conversation with this woman would take a different tack: the Holy Spirit has something to offer anyone, from any religious or nonrelgious tradition on earth--a two-way connection with the God of the universe who will then, himself, take on the heavy lifting of redirecting the person praying towards what's actually good and real and central in the universe.  (And, for the record, in my world this is Jesus.)  But it's this living connection which holds all promise.  All people on earth already want this and by and large have no idea how to pursue it.  The Holy Spirit is the answer.

I'm pondering this.  I'm intrigued.  I wonder both if this is a home-run of an insight and if it's lacking in some key way I can't fully articulate (perhaps that lack has something to do with Jesus).

But what do you think?  Does the world need the Holy Spirit even more than (hoping not to be struck by lightning as I type this) it needs Jesus?  (At least as a starting point.)

Do You Have Occasions to Talk about the Meaning of Life with People Who Don't Share Your Perspective?

Grace and I have had this super-fun opportunity this summer.  A few friends and I spent the better part of a year in casual conversations about how we might set up a conversation about the deepest things in life with our friends who would never, say, join us at a church or at a Seek Course (however awesome, just to say, either of those things might in fact be... :) ). 

And what we finally came up with was no great stroke of genius, but has really been fun.  We (Dan L helped out on this) reserved a meeting room in a local pub, threw in some money up front so everyone would have plenty of beer and appetizers, and gathered with our friends-of-diferent-points-of-view to hear from a few people as a discussion-starter just before we chatted ourselves with said friends. 

So last night for instance.  Amy--famed for her genius posts on this blog (and I've asked her if she'd be willing to post on this, which she's said she'd do)--thoughtfully and winsomely shared her spiritual story of cultural Judaism to atheism to connecting with God through prayer to observant Judaism.  I shared a few observations about people I've known who've wanted to explore meaning in life but have had to overcome some common barriers to pull it off.  And then we chatted over beer and appetizers with our friends we'd invited.  And then we went home.  (Grace and I chatted with Amy and a friend of hers and learned some things that were completely new to us and talked immediately at a kind of depth we rarely get to experience.)

I Trust You Have Moral Standards. Why?

It strikes me that this blog has not yet quoted Bette Midler.  I know that's troubled you, so let me rectify that with my favorite quote from her: "I have my standards.  They're low, but I have them."

So for those of you who take an interest in theology, let's head that direction today.

Every now and again I talk with a longtime churchgoer about centered-set.  They often assume we're speaking the same language until I press my point (I can be that way) that I'm truly not bounded.  It's centered-set or nothing.  Because they're kindhearted people and want to believe that I'm not a demon from hell, they press me that surely I have SOME standards, SOME sense of who's good and who's bad, some sense of how we know good behavior from bad.  So I clearly must have my boundaries.

There's a theological term for this.  Is being centered-set the same as being "antinomian," or "lawless?" 

I think the answer is "no."  But getting to that "no" takes a little chatting.

On the one hand it's "no" because of the nature of centered-set: you're either moving towards the center, towards Jesus, or not.  So the implicit "law" boils down to whether a given behavior is effective or ineffective towards drawing one closer to Jesus.  It's the rare embezzler who says, "I've never known sweet closeness to Jesus the way I have since I stole my first hundred grand."  Now some of my churchgoing friends would worry on this front.  What's to keep a conscience-less embezzler from feeling no guilt whatsoever, from happily singing robust songs of praise to Jesus each Sunday and sleeping like a baby each night?  Without a clear code of conduct, are all bets off?

4th Podcast: Dave & Tanya Lurhmann

Note from Dan: Round 4 of the Blue Ocean podcasts is an interview with future Blue Ocean Summit guest speaker Tanya Luhrmann. Tanya is a professor of anthropology at Stanford University and her latest work focuses on the way American evangelicals learn to experience God compared with psychosis in psychiatric clients. Just as a heads up, we had to record this podcast over the phone so the sound quality is slightly less than normal.

 

 

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Luhrmann, Tanya Marie -- Professor (taken from Stanford's department of anthropology website)

Ph.D. Cambridge, 1986

Tanya joined the department of Cultural and Social Anthropology in Spring of 2007. Her interests include the social construction of psychological experience, particularly in the domain of what some would call the “non-rational”. Her current work looks at the way American evangelicals learn to experience God and at psychosis in psychiatric clients. These are very different projects, but both concern the way that social learning may affect even someone’s sensory experience. One of her research goals is to distinguish the different patterns of sensory experiences most commonly identified as divinely inspired and those most commonly identified as psychiatric symptoms, and to understand those patterns in historical and social context.

Tanya trained at the University of Cambridge (PhD 1986), and taught for many years at the University of California San Diego. Prior to coming to Stanford she was Max Palevsky Professor and a director of the Clinical Ethnography project in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. Her first project was a detailed study of the way reasonable people come to believe apparently unreasonable beliefs (“Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft”, Harvard, 1989). Her second project explored the apparently irrational self-criticism of a postcolonial India elite, the result of colonial identification with the colonizers (“The Good Parsi”, Harvard 1996). Her third book identified two cultures with the American profession of psychiatry and examined the way these different cultures encouraged two different forms of empathy and two different understandings of mental illness (“Of Two Minds”, Knopf, 2000).

 

 

Can Steve Martin Teach Us Something About How God Answers Prayer?/ Vince Brackett

Chicago played host this past weekend to the Just For Laughs comedy festival (headlined by a favorite here: Louis C.K.).  I read a review of one of its acts, “A Very Stupid Conversation” with Steve Martin and Martin Short, and was struck by a little nugget from Steve Martin.  The reviewer, Chris Jones from the Chicago Tribune, wrote:

“At one point, Martin was coaxed into a fascinating explanation of how he'd decided, early in his truly formidable career, to adapt the old comedic saw that jokes must build tension in the listeners which only the punch line can release. As Martin saw it, that was not the way people laugh when they're with their friends. So how do you re-create that kind of laughter from a stage? Well, why not just keep building tension?

 
‘If you do that,’ Martin said, to the murmurs of a house that contained plenty of awestruck young comics, ‘they're going to pick their own place to laugh. And that way, they're going to feel smarter and think you're funnier.’
 
You just have to think about that for a moment to see its truth. Ironic, really, that a man with clear misanthropic qualities figured out how to empower his audience.”

I love the use of the word “empower” to describe Martin’s effect on his audience.  For me, this feels really applicable to how we think about God answering prayer.  Our old saw is that all of our praying builds tension which God’s answer finally releases.  But what if God’s approach is often more like Steve Martin’s approach to comedy?  What if he thinks: why not just keep building tension?  Adapting Martin’s words: if God does that, we discover on our own places to acknowledge his power and movement; that way, we feel like greater participants in the process and we see God as much bigger.

Does the News Make Us Dumb?

Our last, brief conversation about taking stands brought back happy memories of reading both C. John Sommerville's How the News Makes Us Dumb and Neil Postman's seminal Amusing Ourselves to Death. 

Both had shocking premises.  Sommerville argues, if memory serves, that the voracious demand for news content not just in newspapers but also on cable t.v. means that the news industry has one objective: to keep you coming back to them for "the rest of the story."  So it's in their interest to drive a perpetual political campaign, for instance.  Who's up?!  Who's down?!  Sommerville argues that news providers create characters for us to follow and, in doing so, pretty much ruin democracy and ruin the ability of those of us who read newspapers or watch cable news to think a coherent thought.  The great fantasy, in Sommerville's world, is that those of us who consume news in whatever form are somehow "more informed" than those who don't.  Far from it, in his world.  What we're consuming is disinformation.  If we ignored all news providers, enough people would, in casual conversation, mention the news items of the moment to us that we'd be plenty informed.  And then our time would be free to pursue his angelic activity--reading books.  While not all books are created equal in his world, any book is superior to any newspaper or magazine (or, God forbid, any cable news show) in that we at least have to stretch ourselves to consider something fully explored.

News providers, in Sommerville's world (again, if memory serves) traffic in "strongly-held opinions."  If they can engender those in us, of course we'll come back to them, as calves to a mother's teat, because we'll now have a rooting interest in the news of the day.  Did the villians take new ground, those blackguards?! 

Which brings us to Postman.  He starts his anti-television screed with a fascinating pitch that each change in human communication has brought a corresponding change in human consciousness.  The introduction of the alphabet gets discussed on these terms!  The printing press.  The telegraph.  TV.  The internet (not discussed--he wrote this in 1985--but this would fit into his wheelhouse).  The big shift for him was with the telegraph.  Now settlers on the frontier could hear all the news and gossip from back East in something approaching real time--as opposed to having to get scraps of information from pony express riders passing through town.  Now these frontier settlers were encouraged to have opinions about things that they themselves could do nothing about, and this was, by and large, a new thing in human society. 

This becomes a refrain for Postman: only have opinions about things you intend to act upon, about things within your sphere of influence.  Anything beyond that encourages us to live a vicarious life rather than an actual one.

I love newspapers.  I read two each day growing up, and I'm of the generation that still takes a daily paper (and my oldest son--14--is hooked and can tell me all sorts of irrelevant facts about things he has no understanding of--from a scandal in our state senate to the Dow Jones industrial average of the day [he has no idea what it means, but he knows the number and the trend each day]).  You'll note how often I post on New York Times editorials (while I subscribe to my local paper, I never find the kind of provocative stuff there that I find in the Times). 

3rd Podcast: Bonus! -- Dave & The LGBT Community

Note from Dan: Round three of the Blue Ocean Podcasts was brought to you in the following two parts: Part 1 & Part 2. It's been such a interesting set of conversations that we wanted to add one more voice from a leader at the Greater Boston Vineyard.

 

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