I Believe in church

As part of the Apostles’ Creed we confess in many churches that we believe in the holy catholic Church.  Some protestants and non-denominational folks get upset because they say, “but I am not Roman Catholic.”  But that is not what that means.  It means that we believe that Christ’s Church is wide and diverse and that that there is more to Christ’s Church than our congregation or even our denomination.

But that’s not what I want to write about!  It has become increasingly the norm in church today to say that we are all about making disciples for Jesus and we are not into “church building.”  I surely understand where that thought comes from.  We can build up an institution where no one is really learning about Christ, drawing closer to Christ, or following what Christ taught us to do.  We can be “Christians” in such an institution in name only.  Hence, we try to put the emphasis on winning people for Christ which may or may not build up congregations.

But I still believe in congregations.  I believe in churches with the little “c.”  I want to see them succeed and I want to see them grow.  I do know that some churches get far off course from who they are supposed to be.  I do know that churches are filled with sinners and not saints.  I do know that churches are often stuck in the past and are missing the context of where they are ministering and are prone to old ways, old technology, and even old theology.  But even with numerous examples of all these and other problems, are we really ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater?  Do churches (collectively) have more problems than value?  It’s not even close in my book.

If we “win” someone as a follower of Jesus but they have no congregation to be a part of, no place to learn of the Bible, no clergy person, no place to be challenged to work with others (and more importantly to love others)  - then what exactly have we won them over for?  Do we win them to be solitary monks or nuns (if not in their physical life, in their religious one)?  Do we win them over to revere Jesus’ name but not face any of the joys and challenges of being a Christian in a community?  Do we say that someone’s growth in their faith is just their personal responsibility (as if we would accept that in anything else we truly value in life)?

Churches do need to make sure they are teaching the teachings of Jesus Christ and helping to grow people’s individual and communal relationship with him.  We do need to have a prophetic voice and be more than just “nice people.”  We do need to be more about teaching God’s Word and not just about fellowship and fun.  We do need to set the example of good behavior (instead of highlighting bad behavior).  But if we, in churches across our land, do not begin to value church more and its function in our faith and in our community – we are going to see them keep getting smaller.  If we don’t find ways to make church compelling for young people, there will be few to gather together in the days to come.

Church growth and church sustainability should not be such negative words.  We should care about the institution of the church, especially it being there for future generations.  I cannot say, “Oh, I am following Jesus but the church might die in the process” with any sense of fulfillment. And for those of us of a particular denomination, we should care very much that our theological heritage is not lost to future generations.

My belief in church doesn’t trump my belief in Christ’s Church universal (the holy Catholic Church) or especially in my belief in Jesus.  But I unashamedly say I do believe in church (little “c”).  And I’m sure you may think that I think this way because I am a pastor.  But no mater whether I am a pastor or not, I will raise my children in one, worship with my spouse in one, and hopefully see children married and grandchildren baptized in one in my life to come.  And I hope this not just for myself but for all of my neighbors as well.  So much that has changed (for the better) in the last 2000 years began in churches.

With Pentecost before us, and with Presbyterian churches across the presbytery starting or being engaged in a process called, “New Beginnings”, I hope the passion for not only personal evangelism and communal mission, but for building up Christ’s many congregations starts again on the upswing.  It is important for today.  It is important for tomorrow.

What do you think?

Until next time,

Tom

Children and Worship

We got into an interesting discussion in our church’s worship committee meeting. What can we do to help children be engaged in worship? At one level, this is a very old discussion. Questions such as, “At what age should children stay in church past the children time?” “Is it appropriate for the older kids to go out and help the adults with the smaller children?” “How could we get the children doing part of the worship service?” have been discussed time and time again.

Now, keep in mind that our church does not lack for a quality children’s time in the worship service. We honestly have the best children’s time I have seen in church in my 20 years of ministry, with one of our members leading it each Sunday. And we also let children who are second grade and younger exit the service for child care. Nevertheless, beyond the children’s time, I think most persons in our sanctuary between the ages of 7 and 18 are frequently bored. I am sure they like the music. They seem to light up during the sharing of prayer concerns. But, beyond that, they almost all seem to be biding their time till church is over. And I do not think our church is at all unusual in this.

For those of us who are older adults, we might want to say en masse, “Well, I had to do it at that age” or “you have to learn sometimes.” But that process is not working. And it hasn’t been working for a long time. In the PC(USA), once they graduate from high school, most youth cease attending worship all together.

Should we take them out of worship and teach them more about the Bible? Should we have a more interactive activity for them? Should we find a way to get young adult leaders? These are all good questions.

But I don’t think most churches need a second Sunday school hour. I think we need to find a way to teach 21st century children, tweens, and teens how to worship in a way that engages them. By the time they get to college, if they don’t go to worship, if we’ve done the right thing, they will feel they are missing out on something that is a key part of who they are.

I know some big churches answer this with high energy praise bands and lots of graphics in worship. And that is all nice and good for churches that have deep pockets or are large enough to have in-house talent to do that. But I think it is incumbent upon 21st century Christians today to find a way to worship God that is not limited to those who have great resources to do so. I honestly think Jesus himself would find it ironic that we have developed a form of worship (the typical praise hour) that you can only implement if you have enough money.

What is the magic answer? I do not know. But as a pastor, I am searching for it. If we do not find a way to engage the children, tweens, and teens in the church, and do it soon, we are going to find that the only places where we can go to worship are very large churches. That might be fine for Christians who live in metropolitan areas, but it will leave much of the country out in the cold.

What do you think? How do you engage children in worship so that they aren’t just listening, but actually worshiping? What steps could we take to get there?

Until next time,

Tom

Fighting the Right Fight

The lawyers for James Holmes, the Aurora shooter, announced today that they planned to have their client enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Tamerlan Tsarnev, the Boston bombing suspect who was killed, can’t get buried to date because no one wants to bury him. If you read the comments following both stories, they are filled with all kinds of graphic descriptions of violence that people would like to enact on them. It is surely understandable that people are appalled at the acts of both men. But I wonder how many who write in also are Christians.

Jesus, whom Christians are supposed to follow, obviously saw, thought about, and even experienced violence and taught about appropriate responses to it as we read through the Gospels. Jesus never responded to violence with violence. And despite some modern conceptions, Jesus neither advocated walking away from or being a doormat to violence either.

When I was younger, my dog liked to go swim in Bayou St. John. Unfortunately, the place where he went (he roamed free in his early days – he was a stray originally) was where fisherman would throw useless bait out and fish heads. My dog loved to go roll in this before he came home. Needless to say – he smelled rather choice after each fish roll. And if he rubbed against your clothes, your clothes would smell like it. If someone hugged you, their clothes would smell like it.

Imagine, if you would, violence (and responding to violence with more violence) as that dead fish smell. We are not called to like it. We are not called to smell like it. We are not called to pass it on. But when we do smell it, we can hate the smell without ourselves passing on the same smell. We may even encounter people who have gotten used to the smell and think it is normal, but it isn’t.

We as a people need to work hard to shed our love for violence. It runs through our society. We are loathe to the violence but often propose as its solution more violence. We may think “we can fight fire with fire” but that so often that ends up being counterproductive. Most often everybody ends up getting burned in some manner or form.

Water (or some other chemical), not more fire, is most often the answer to a fire. Yes, there are cases where we do fight fires (lighting a backfire to reduce a larger’s fire’s spread). There are some cases where in our fallen world we can’t do anything but fight violence with more violence. But it is not the long term answer. It never has been.

Jesus’ way, even if it is not our tendency, is the right way. Let’s stand up to violence. Let’s stand against it. But let’s be careful not to run with the crowd in our response. And let’s not forget, Jesus didn’t go off to quietly contemplate. He stood his ground (even at the cost of his life). He gave of himself for others. And that is how he found eternal life.

Violence may be the way of our world but it is not the way of Jesus Christ and should never be the default answer for Christians.

Let us point to a different path – a better one.

What do you think?

Until next time,

Tom

Cloning and Christianity

As many of you know, I enjoy science fiction. Lately, I have come across two scifi stories (one on TV and one in the movies. If you plan to watch either Orphan Black or Moon anytime soon, you might want to skip this entry because I do give away plot points). But I hope to get beyond the fiction too and talk about moral and ethical questions for us all.

The great value of both stories is that they push us to think about empathy. We like Sam Bell playing Sam Rockwell in Moon (a solo lunar miner waiting for his contract to be completed so he can go back to Earth). Tatiana Maslany playing Sarah in Orphan Black is a little less lovable at first (she scams people, has lost custody of her daughter, and maintains some questionable friendships) but as the story develops you realize what a difficult life she has had and her wit and her determination to make a better life win you over.

But what pushes the envelope in both story lines is when you find out there are other Sams and other Sarahs. In the case of Sam, Sam2 is exactly like Sam1 other than the fact that he is out of cycle with Sam1 (the lunar base simply clones the exact same miner each time it needs one). In the case of Sarah though, her clones (or is she a clone?) look like her but have lived very different lives. If you root for Sarah, do you root for Beth, or Alison, or “the German”, or Cosimo too? What about the “killer clone”? In Moon, is Sam2 really trying to help Sam? Should we like Sam2 as much as we like Sam? As a viewer, how far will our empathy for the main characters stretch?

I find this to be an excellent question because all it takes it to take one step further and ask ourselves, “Does the exact same DNA matter when it comes to caring for fellow human beings like us?” DNA or even being of the same family or culture didn’t make Jesus exclude people. So for Christians today, if we grew up in Russia (in a former communist country), in Iran (in a Shiite Muslim culture), or in North Korea (with all their political indoctrination) – how much would we be like we are in the here and now? How much of “us” is made by nature and how much by nurture? Can we be empathetic with them?

And while traveling the galaxy in a space ship is probably something that will remain in the realm of science fiction for 99.9% of us for the rest of our lives, technologically, we are not too far away from being able to clone people. What are the ethical ramifications of that? Is it ok to clone a kidney but not a whole person? When someone does clone a whole person (someone will someday no matter what laws we pass), is the clone as fully human as you or me? How do we prevent clones being made as replacement parts repositories for original people? Would God love a clone as much as the original? Would a clone have a soul? If we do clone people, will clones be in heaven?

God has given us great minds and power in this creation. How will we exercise it? How can we encourage and develop empathy in ourselves and in one another?

Technologically we are progressing so fast. Will we ethically and morally keep up the same pace?

What do you think?

(Probably a record number of questions in a single blog entry!)

Until next time,

Tom

The Weaker Sex?

If you look up strong in the dictionary, the first definition is having or marked by great physical power.  The second definition though is having great moral or intellectual power.  When I was young, I would have always thought of the first definition as the one that mattered.  But as I age I ask myself, what type of strength really makes a lasting difference in this world?”

Samson was the person in the Bible with the greatest physical strength.  But he is seldom uplifted as a model of behavior, even in the church.  And when the Olympics come on TV today, the weight lifting competition (which requires the most physical strength) is not nearly as interesting to most folks as other sports where far less muscle is needed.

I am not saying physical strength is unimportant.  We spend millions upon millions both watching athletes and trying to get in better physical shape ourselves.  We could probably do our planet, our nation, our families, and ourselves a favor if we all exercised a bit more.  But, in the end, is physical strength our primary measure of power?  As important as our military is, it isn’t that type of strength in my book which makes America a strong nation.  When the Nazis controlled Germany, they had lots of military hardware and yet they surely were not strong in so many ways.

Males have traditionally been accorded the tribute of being the ‘stronger sex.’  And, there is no doubt, the median male usually has more physical strength than the female.  But, what is inescapable to me as a pastor is noticing the different trends in spirituality between the two genders.  I also noticed in school growing up that the median girl usually outperformed the median male academically.

So, does all this mean it is time to turn the world upside down and put women in charge?  Should we just make them our our intellectual, political, and spiritual leaders and relegate males to jobs more attuned to physical strength?  Of course not.  Some of the greatest minds and some of the greatest political, academic, and spiritual leaders we have  encountered in human history have been men (and there are and have been some women who possess incredible physical strength as well).  Men seem to have a greater ability to focus in on problems to solve them.  Women seem to see “the big picture” better than men often do.  Both have tendencies to benefit all of us.

I point this all out to say – we need each other and we need to broaden what we think of as “strong.”  Men, in general, need to be more open to receiving spiritual insights from women.  It should not be lost on us, even those who strongly support women’s ordinations, that denominations that ordain women seem to have less participation than ones that ordain only men.  My gender seems to pull back from female leadership (particularly spiritual leadership).  And that is a huge mistake.  Accepting women leaders does not mean men will be relegated to the ‘back row.’  We might just find our sisters will be far more equitable than men have been toward women over the years.

And women should not be so comfortable in gathering in institutions where just women predominate.  We need both genders.  Both of us have the image of God within us.  That means we need each other to get the full picture and perspective that God reveals to us.  I believe some women are very comfortable that there are less men in the church which, in the end, is to their detriment as well as ours.

The truth is there is no weaker sex (or stronger sex).  We both just have different tendencies.  We both need to realize that the other sex has something that we need in all aspects of life.  God made us to need each other.  God gave us different characteristics with a reason and a purpose.  We tend to understand this more on an individual level, but we need to see it on a societal level as well.

And especially as Christians, if we want to follow Jesus, there is only one way, to do it effectively and that is together.

What do you think?

Until next time,

Tom

Putting God Back in the Storm

A natural reaction to yesterday’s tornados in Jefferson Parish would be to say, “Well, in the end, God had nothing to do with them.  Weather conditions were right. It formed a tornado.  For those unlucky enough to be in its path, it is sad for them (property damage but blessedly in this case – no injuries or loss of life).  But a tornado is not a faith based issue.  It’s a meteorological phenomenon, that is all.”  But what if God was in that storm yesterday?

Elijah, at a down moment in his life, experienced God on a mountaintop.  But it wasn’t in the wind, or the earthquake, or the fire that he found him.  He heard God in the still small voice.  There were many small voices I heard yesterday giving safety directions, talking, consoling, singing, story telling, and praying together.

I see God not in the sending of the tornados.  There were natural phenomenon.  But God was in the storm, in its very path, in his people who were threatened.  And I do believe God made a difference, in how we responded to the storm, and maybe even on how the storm responded as well.

I give thanks for the many people I saw working together through this brief but strong little storm.  And I give thanks that God was with us.

What do you think?

Until next time,

Tom

Exercise – Unexpected News

      I watched a recent PBS special on exercise, something that is an active part of my life. I would like to nobly claim this was due to my absolute commitment to physical health but I have a far more practical reason – the USAF tests me once a year with my physical fitness. Failing this test, which has grown in difficultly as I have gotten older, is not good if you desire to stay in the USAF. Suffice it to say, I have a strong motivator to stay in shape. And I keep my eye on media sources that might help me. And this PBS special had information I had not heard (at least fully) before.

In a nutshell, what the special asserted is that we all have a common enemy and that is the chair. Our health is largely dependent on movement and yet, for many of us, our jobs keep us sitting for long periods of time. Then what often happens after we are tired at the end of a work day? We leave work and sit in a variety of other chairs (at dinner, at the coffee shop, at home before bed). This is doing more damage than we can imagine and is a great contributor to the rising rate of diabetes in our country (when coupled with all the sugar we tend to consume and then not burn off). And for those who don’t have a sweet tooth, remember alcohol turns into sugar too.

So, if that is our common enemy, who is our friend? Exercise is, of course, but what they shared I had never heard. Many of us complain that we don’t have the time to exercise regularly. But perhaps a great deal of time isn’t needed. What they found is if they got their test subject to ride an exercise bike, as fast as he possibly could go, for two minutes, three times an exercise session, and then did this three times a week, that it made a huge difference with his health. All we are talking about is 18 minutes – a week! That exercise, coupled with a commitment to walk anytime he had the option to walk, made a huge difference in the level of fat in his bloodstream and how quickly his body was burning off sugar when consumed. Eighteen minutes of exercise a week and walking a bit more doesn’t sound too onerous does it? Just remember, in the exercise portion, in each of those two minute bursts, we need to be exerting close to our maximum energy.  Of course, only do this if your doctor believes this to be good for you.  Always check with your doctor before trying something new.

I hope to share this with my fellow military members who all have a vested interest in staying in shape. I also especially hope to share this in the church, where church activity more often than not involves sitting. I don’t plan for this to be my sole exercise. But I do plan to integrate those maximum bursts into my workout plan starting today.

God gave us these wonderful bodies and he did not create us to be idle. Our modern world allows us to work without exerting ourselves very often. Let’s see what we all can do to change this. It might just be good for both body and soul.

And for those who want to learn more, here is the link for the whole program from PBS:  http://video.pbs.org/video/2364989581

What do you think?

Until next time,

Tom