Lutheran Confessions

The Gospel and the Power of Positive Thinking

2012-02-26T21:34:00.005-06:00

Sermon for the first Sunday of Lent, "God's Got Your Back." Trying to offer some critical tools on how to think theologically about PPT, and then make the "bow in the sky" imagery of Genesis a bit more polysemous, and specifically, more Christological.

Also trying to situate the whole "go and multiply" piece missiologically.

Along the way, Odysseus makes an appearance with his bow.

Common English Bible

2012-02-25T16:14:00.001-06:00

We're using the Common English Bible translation throughout the season of Lent as our primary text for proclaiming the lectionary. It will be interesting to see how our survey results come out, how people hear the differences when they are read aloud.

One notable difference is the contractions (in comparison to the NRSV).

What translation does your church use in worship?

No catches, get your ashes

2012-02-23T21:46:00.000-06:00

Do you ever have a great idea, but then agonize over the execution? Some clergy I admire offer public ashing in their communities--on street corners, in front of movie theaters, on university campuses, in abandoned places of empire. My idea was to go and do likewise. I typically have a little bit of free time combined with nervous energy on the Wednesday afternoon of Ash Wednesday. Plus the whole idea sounds kind of liturgico-missional, right up my alley.

Here is where the agony comes in. I couldn't decide where to offer ashes, and I couldn't decide if I had the nerves to do it. The logistics kept boggling.

Warning: this next part is a painful inquiry into the psychological state of someone (me) getting the nerve to do something. First, I posted a question on Facebook in our group page. "Do you want to join in this activity? Where should it happen?" Whenever I'm uncertain, I enlist outside opinion.

Then, I started pondering where properly our "parish" is situated, and whether it would be proper to offer ashes outside the boundaries of that parish. So, for example, although there is a lot of foot traffic on Dickson Street downtown, there are plenty of churches on Dickson, whereas we actually sit geographically in a residential neighborhood of NE Fayetteville. Would our presence on Dickson implicate other churches in something they hadn't planned themselves? Should I call the pastors and check to confirm they would be okay with what we were doing? If I did offer ashes in our neighborhood where there is less foot traffic, would anyone actually stop by?

We considered offering ashes at the library (again, need to check propriety), the mall (how would that work?) and a variety of other places (including Rick's Bakery, an idea I still quite like because we could eat donuts--is that allowed on Ash Wednesday?).

By this time I had pretty much dissuaded myself from going out and offering ashes. Plenty of other very worthwhile activities for a pastor to pursue at the beginning of Lent. Mark it on the calendar as something to consider for next year. Then move on.

However, Wednesday came around, and the weather was spectacular. Worship was rehearsed and ready by 3 p.m., so I decided to go out and offer ashes impromptu, in learning mode. Posted again briefly on FB indicating a 4 p.m. arrival at the intersection of College and Rolling Hills, and off I went with a jar full of ash and a sign printed, simply, "Ashes."

One member of our congregation came out to join me, as did a family I am friends with who were staying at a motel at that intersection. So within ten minutes we had all been ashed (the kindergartener called the ashing "going God"), and in addition, I had the chance to explain to the kids what Ash Wednesday was all about (they come from a tradition where they know the biblical stories but don't "enact" them liturgically in quite the same way we do).

Then we stood around for a long time watching traffic drive by and no one stopped for ashes.

After a while, we decided to walk over into the strip mall parking lot, eventually landing at the corner across from the movie theater. Still, no takers. We looked pretty cool as a group, young friendly kid faces, three of us approximately 40, one wearing an episcopal collar and dressed in black, all with ashes on our foreheads.

Frankly, we looked like religious freaks. Really nice and friendly freaks with an awesome clan of children. But there was that sign that read "ashes" and that weird jar of black ash and a dude in clerics.

One typical response we received to our offers of ashes was, "No thanks, I'm baptist." Mostly, people avoided eye contact.

It was at this point, and only then, that I really started to learn. Sometimes failure requires you to readjust your expectations in order to actually be open to the learning available in a given situation.

First of all, regardless of whether we ashed anybody else, we had ashed each other, we were sharing time and space and conversation together, gathered in remembrance of our own mortality. There is value in that.

Second, I learned some narratives. My friend, for example, mentioned that she has seen, more than once, since living in this area, that sometimes religious people offer a station you can approach, or invite you into conversation, but there is always a "catch." Come do this activity, and then let us try to convert you to...

One of the great strengths of Lutherans (there are weaknesses also, but let me list a strength) is our humility around evangelism. We share our faith, like offering ashes, but it is almost never instrumentalist. We don't offer you one thing only to then bait and switch to something else. What you see is what you get. If we're offering ashes, that's all we're offering. Ashes.

So we brainstormed a sentence for our sign next year, "No catches, get your ashes."

After about an hour we walked home. I stopped by the local rehab center to offer ashes to a member there. Before the actual Ash Wednesday service, I had the opportunity to ash a few more folks on their way to volleyball, the nursing home, and so on. Ashes flowed around the borders of the actual Ash Wednesday service in some new ways.

Then in worship we seriously ashed the large group gathered for that purpose.

Intriguingly, I already have volunteers for next year, including another friend and neighbor who attends the Episcopal church and wants to join us. I have another person who would like to take the ashes to the university campus. Yet another was in a meeting and couldn't join us but loves this kind of thing. Still others suggested (and offered to help lead) a morning or noon Ash Wednesday service in order to get ashed earlier in the day.

So the volunteering is snowballing, and it makes me wonder if I should be brainstorming some other "take liturgy into the real world" type events between now and Ash Wednesday 2013.

Most definitely, and in the meantime I'm just going to agonize less. Often I look weird even when I'm not aware of it. Getting out and looking weird in the name of Jesus and as a witness to the life-giving God who overcomes even our death and return to ashes is worth it.

Young Lutheran Artists Spotting!!!

2012-02-18T21:17:00.001-06:00

Last week I asked, "Where are the artists?" and particularly wondered where and if young artists were emerging in our church(es). This post garnered some particularly lively discussion which you can follow here.

Here's what I learned. First, it really is true that it is hard to find young creatives in our church. Some are leaving for other denominations or non-denoms that fund and foster younger creativity more than we do. Others are simply quietly doing work in their congregations, and aren't necessarily putting out albums or publishing.

By and large, I think my initial thesis still stands. We aren't fostering creativity. Anyone reading this with the wherewithal and the resources, here's my best advice: we need to start spending money on creatives. We need to hire them, fund them, create places and spaces for them to flourish. Anyone game?

Finally, I did want to give a shout out to all the young creatives you all linked to in your responses. So below is a list of names readers offered up as examples of young Lutheran artists. Although here's the funny thing. Not all of them are young, and not all of them are Lutheran.

No matter. I feel good about giving them a shout out here. Most are links so you can go listen for yourself. One disclaimer: this is not intended to be exhaustive, it's just folks y'all told me about.

http://guaguaelectrica.com/fr_home.cfm

Tay Wilson

Dan Schwandt

Paul Friesen-Carper

Eric Engblade

Nathan Schleicher

The Northern Skies

Tim Jahn

Gretchen Weller Mertes

http://www.starboarders.com/

Chris Tripolino

Peter Schwich

http://koinemusic.com/

http://bifrostarts.com/

Other arts:

Emily Bouvier (photography) http://stolaf.edu/depts/cis/wp/ebouvier/index.html

A few folks pointed out that my aim was too narrow in focusing exclusively on young Lutheran rockers. You're right, that's a narrow topic, but honestly, I needed some way to focus. However, if you know great Lutheran artists working in other media, list them here in the comments!

Re:Lent

2012-02-14T07:00:00.000-06:00

Like everybody else, I often prefer to read books (or watch movies or talk with people) that reinforce my worldview. It's nice to surround ourselves with a cushion of intellectual and cultural support, an echo chamber in which we can remain comfortably the selves we most hope to be.

Spiritually mature people, on the other hand, although at rest in and comfortable with themselves, typically reach out and connect with thought forms and life patterns quite different from their own.

I'm making an attempt at a greater level of spiritual maturity this Lenten season (yes, attempts at spiritual maturity are fraught with danger--bear with me). I'm studying, and now inviting others also to read: Exponential: How You and Your Friends Can Start a Missional Church Movement.

On the one hand, this book might look like the kind of book that would reinforce rather than challenge my own worldview. I'm interested in developing a satellite ministry (or even satellite ministries, plural) of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. This book was recommended by colleagues as a great resource for envisioning and moving towards that goal. Voila, reinforcement!

However, when I started to read the book, all kinds of red flags appeared. The book made me frequently uncomfortable. I'm not surprised that others on our staff who have read the book have also been made uncomfortable by what they read.

Some of the things that make me uncomfortable include:

1) The authors assume less people are 'saved' than I do.
2) Some parts of the growth strategy sound suspiciously like Amway marketing.
3) The Ferguson's and their church are part of the dominant conservative evangelical culture--growth is therefore easier for them than us (although it is interesting to note they have often started churches in urban areas that would be a challenge for their social positions and theological outlook).
4) I'm not sure I want to develop a full-blown missional movement. I'm more interested in just developing some satellite ministries around Northwest Arkansas. The later chapters seem like instructions for developing a denomination, something we're already a part of as a member congregation of the ELCA.
5) I don't think God gives you Bill Hybel's private phone number in a dream.

All of that being said, once I got past some of my gut-level discomforts, the Ferguson's book challenged me to revisit some of my ministry assumptions, and I realized there are some patterns they build into their ministry that I really want to emulate. In fact, their book challenged me to re-think some places in my ministry where I think I was blatantly focusing on the wrong things, and for the wrong reasons.

As staff and leadership of our congregation (or anyone encouraged to read this book via this post), I'd like to invite you to read this book in this way. Don't read it as a book that provides a wholesale model for how we will do ministry in NWA, or how I think our ministry should change or develop. That's not my goal. My goal in reading the book is to glean transferable principles, insights that we can gain from their worldview that can intrude on our own and challenge us to develop better focus in our own context on ministries that "connect people to God through the gospel of Christ."

Read with an open and creative mind, this book can also help us imagine how to transfer wisdom in it to many other contexts than church. There are some principles in this book that might help us think more clearly about how to grow our small business, work at our office, parent, be a good neighbor, grow our book group, coach a sports team, and so on. Think of it as an exercise in wisdom sharing.

So here are some of my gleanings from the book I now carry with me. I'd love to hear yours.

1) I really want to develop an apprenticing culture, where all Christians in our community see it as their God-given mission to identify and raise up gifted people to serve alongside of them and even eventually replace them. I think this should be a deeply Lutheran way of living out our faith. We believe in the priesthood of all believers, but we are often bad at developing methods for actually raising up a priesthood of all believers. Our current practice of professionalizing ministry is sometimes misguided. I loved having pastoral interns in my last parish, and would love to host them again, but now I'm imagining all the ways we could do "internships" at every level of our ministry, from Sunday school instruction, to developing small groups, to serving on council, to playing in the worship band. I also watch and celebrate more when I see people apprentice others well (like yesterday when I watched Bob and Tess apprentice students at the Bach concert).

2) I want to identify and celebrate artists and creativity. Lutherans believe in the freedom of the Gospel. Freedom in Christ is central to who we are. This freedom should extend to church life as a place for artistic license and creativity. Again, we're already a musical church. The goal here is to simply open the doors even wider to space for creativity and musical excellence, especially young people.

3) I really do think that each person is called to start a missional church movement at their own level of influence. This doesn't mean that everyone needs to become a pastor, or that everyone even needs to work or volunteer in a church setting. But each person can develop and multiply ministries in their own contexts. Parents are called to do this by raising their children in faith and being effective in mentoring their child's faith. Individuals are called to do this in the way they interact with their co-workers (many of the members of our church are outstanding at this and work in mentoring cultures like Walmart, Tyson, and the university--we have much to learn from them). If you look back at the original Reformation, Luther and Melanchthon were constantly hosting creatives and theologians and equipping them to go back out and start ministries in their contexts. Similarly, when Lutherans came to North America, they were starting up churches, and schools, and colleges, and hospitals, and non-profits ALL OVER THE PLACE! This should be a natural part of our DNA as Lutherans. We start stuff.

4) We especially start ministries that serve the marginalized. Again, the Ferguson's are great at this. Late in the book they mention that their goal is to reach the percentage of the population that has not encountered the Christ of faith, and also to walk alongside the 20% of the world's population that lives in abject poverty. Our own congregation has this kind of social ministry commitment, and I think we could strengthen it by learning from the principles in this book, many of which if modeled well could initiate ministries like Community Emergency Outreach, a significant ministry in Fayetteville that was birthed out of conversations initiated by pastors and other leaders of our congregation.

5) We can learn from their passion. They dream big dreams, write them down, and then cast that vision over and over again. I share their passion, even if the particular focus of my dreams are different, and I am inspired by their "sold out" commitment to the vision they believe God has entrusted them with.

These are the kinds of reflections I'm going to try and walk us through during the forty days of Lent. I'll try to weave in lots of stories from our own context and congregational life, because I think we already see glimpses here and there of what the Fergusons propose. If you have especially good stories you'd like to have shared, let me know. Keep your eyes open. Let's watch and learn together.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and read the book. It means a lot to me. Getting to a place where all of us share a common vision, though difficult and challenging, will bear much fruit. I trust God will grow and see and change us in order to fulfill God's vision for us.

Where are the artists? - or why our church is dying

2012-02-12T22:25:00.003-06:00

I cut my Lutheran rock teeth on the anthems of great Lutheran song writers (Jay Beach, John Ylvisaker, Lost & Found, Peder Eide and Ray Makeever) while at summer camp and national youth conventions.

As an adult, I have had the pleasure of singing the songs of great Lutheran rockers who are approximately my age (Jonathan Rundman, Nate Houge, Kent Gustavson, Richard Bruxvoort Colligan, David Scherer, and Rachel Kurtz).

These are great musicians. They have added to the rich musical heritage of the Lutheran tradition. They write beautiful music that is also faithful to the liturgical and theological sensibilities of our church.

So here's the question.

Where are the up and coming artists?

When I watch for new music written by Lutheran rockers, it's always still stuff coming out of the artists I mentioned above. And I like it, don't get me wrong.

I just don't know where the 20-somethings are. I assume they are around, but they aren't putting out albums, they're not playing at our youth gatherings and synodical events. Maybe there are secret societies of 20-something Lutheran rockers I'm not privy to, printing tapes and LPs in a neo-hip disconnected media modality.

Or maybe I live in some weird silo. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

But I wonder, is this the canary in the mine shaft? No artists means no church. Dave Ferguson in his book Exponential says,

"If you asked me to give you the absolute essentials for spreading a missional movement of reproducing churches, I would narrow it down to two things:

1. Reproduce more and better leaders.
2. Reproduce more and better artists."

Ferguson poaches an idea from Richard Florida's important research on The Rise of the Creative Class, that there is a direct correlation between the size and concentration of the creative class and the vitality of the community.

How do you attract creatives? They don't tend to look for the traditional markers when they move around, like sports stadiums, malls, etc. What they want, above all else, is the opportunity to validate their identities as creative people."

I can still remember sitting in a class in seminary and Rollie Martinson, a professor of youth ministry, standing up and talking about how important Jonathan Rundman was in the new movement of Lutheran church, celebrating his innovation and creativity. People were cheering Jonathan on, and giving him space.

What musicians are we mentoring, equipping, freeing, and validating now?

If you know 20-something, or even teen musicians, who are working intentionally as Lutheran musicians crafting music for our churches, would you please tell me about them? If you don't, will you begin now to work for the kind of church that does encourage creatives?

What are the cultural keys that attract artists? (here are the ones Ferguson suggests)

1. Take risks: space to try stuff out, float balloons.
2. Develop relationships: open mics, recitals, networking.
3. Give artists a role: Ask them to share their gifts.
4. Plan to reproduce: mentor new artists.
5. Rock it out: In the words of Dewey Finn (played by Jack Black in School of Rock), "Dude, I service society by rocking, okay? I'm out there on the front lines liberating people with my music."

One final note: I've borrowed from Ferguson here because I think he gets the process of developing artists in Christian community spot on. We can learn from him. The part that is missing is the weird particularity of being Lutheran. There's something about the Lutheran artists I've listed above that makes them unique. They don't sound like Nashville. They may never play on Christian radio. And I love them for that.

So the other part here, are we developing in our artists that mysterious quality that helps them, in their own peculiar ways, to match the Lutheran voice to a suitable artistic medium. And are we inviting them to consider that quest as worthy, exciting, and life-giving?

Trading Places With Jesus

2012-02-12T14:36:00.000-06:00

It's not every Sunday that a sermon introduction utilizing Jürgen Habermas makes sense as a way into the gospel of Mark, or that a story on healing bears direct resemblance to the Christology in Paul, or where liberation theology also comes through clearly as a Balthasarian meditation on Christian beauty, but I think this sermon actually weaves those together in a way that proclaims law and gospel. I invite you to listen:

http://goodshepherdnwa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/02-12-12S.mp3

Virtual Community, Collectives, and Play: The Culture of New Learning

2012-02-10T18:00:00.000-06:00

The Reverend Clint Schnekloth

ELCA Youth Extravaganza

New Orleans, February 2012

Through good game design we can leverage deeper and deeper learning as a form of pleasure in people’s lives without any hint of school or schooling.

"In my view video games are a new art form. We have no idea yet how people 'read' video games, what meanings they make from them. Still less do we know how they will 'read' them in the future. Video games are at the very beginning of their potential--'we ain't see nothin' yet.'" James Paul Gee[1]

At the beginning of our time together, I invite you to enter an imaginative space with me. Consider this possibility, that participation in the Extravaganza, and in this workshop, in fact even participation in the ELCA Youth Ministry Network, is a form of gaming. Consider.

First, the network itself is an example of “crowdsourcing.” Crowdsourcing is inviting a large group of people to cooperatively tackle a big project… outsourcing a job to a crowd. The network has as its goal to empower and strengthen adult youth ministry leaders in service to Christ. It does this through networking youth ministry leaders serving and supporting each other. As one example, I’m here of my own free will, non-stipendiary, to conduct this workshop. All the other workshop leaders have also been crowdsourced. As have a majority of the youth leaders who plan the Extravaganza and serve in various volunteer capacities with the ELCA Youth Ministry Network.

Second, and this is more a psychological theory, when you came to this Extravaganza, you came as an avatar. You are in all likelihood not exactly the same person you are in other contexts—with your youth, in your church, in your family. Here at the Extravaganza, you are the avatar you have selected to represent yourself in this socially constructed environment, in New Orleans, at a conference with other youth leaders. Some of our avatars are quite a bit like the avatars we put on in other places. Some others of us “present” quite a bit differently here than elsewhere.

Third, our whole system of workshops is itself a complicated form of gaming. You had a map, and a schedule, and you are finding your way around this hotel seeking out workshop experiences that will gain you experience points you hope will level you up to new levels of ministry when you return home. Attend the right workshop, and you’ll go from being a level 12 youth leader to level 14. Level 14 comes with a brand new cross bow and extra healing spells.

Within this particular workshop, we are gaming according to certain rules. Some workshops have an open, Minecraft-like feel (build whatever you want, wherever). This particular workshop is more directed. You have some imaginative freedom, but I’ve selected a lecture format to walk us through some new territory that, Myst-like, might be difficult to navigate if certain puzzles or wayposts are not navigated correctly.

The Extravaganza is a good game world. It attracts a large number of participants because of the play area (New Orleans), the various collaborative and networking possibilities, and its existence as a kind of “built environment” with lectures, worship, meals, and workshops. The E also has good game mechanics, with variety and flow and open space to roam and explore and chill. Aspects of the E allow for great control over the environment, such as the early Intensives on offer. The mechanics could be improved if there were some kind of real pay-off for attendance, like earning academic credit hours… but perhaps that is available and its simply a part of the game mechanics I haven’t discovered yet. Finally, the E has (and this is its greatest selling point) great game community. There’s plenty of space for positive social interaction and a meaningful context for collective effort.[2]

Before we continue, let’s pause for a minute and consider any other ways in which participation in the E is like a gaming world.

Early drafts of this lecture began with arguments for why youth workers and church leaders should game. I thought winsome and compelling narratives of the difference gaming makes might draw you into the gaming world. I assumed, “Youth workers are missionaries. They’re up for being sent into new cultural contexts and venues.” In addition, my early lecture plans included the goal of disabusing hearers of their patronizing and ill-informed judgments against virtual worlds and the gaming culture. Think of this as a dual strategy of invitation and attack.

Then I started inviting people to participate with me in daily prayer on Second Life. To date, the only person I’ve successfully convinced to create an avatar and meet me at St. Matthew’s-by-the-Sea for Compline is my brother, who I think, though in some ways curious, participated under a bit of filial duress. Over time, I’ve learned that very, very few pastors and church leaders inhabit digital virtual worlds, and in fact most pastors and church leaders have some rather obdurate and steadfast reasons for not inhabiting those worlds (not enough time, boundary issues, not tech savvy, not a high priority, just don’t get it, that’s silly, it’s not real community, and so on). Douglas Estes in his fascinating little book Simchurch observes something similar to what I have experienced in having conversations on this topic around our church: “If we want to reach people in the virtual world, we have to reach avatars, even though the whole avatar thing gives a lot of church people the willies.”[3] Nevermind that the “Christian church is engaging far less than 1 percent of the seventy million people who are active in the virtual world [many of whom are teens]. This means the virtual world is by far the largest unreached people group on planet Earth.”[4]

All of this forced me to reconsider my opening gambit. Since I am convinced, radically convinced, that ministry in digital virtual contexts is an essential next step in pastoral and youth ministry, I had to find some way both to attract participants to a workshop on the topic, and keep you here and interested for an hour. Even more radically, I’d like to build a cohort of ELCA youth leaders who would entertain the possibility of doing cooperative ministry in some of these virtual frontiers.

Hence the World of Workshop imaginative meditation I made use of at the beginning… If the likelihood of convincing you to travel to virtual digital worlds is slim, the next best inception I could accomplish is to come game in your real world and make you doubt, at least a bit, whether your reality is as real as you think—even better, to convince you that you are gaming all the time, whether you recognize it or not. You inhabit an avatar, you inhabit various avatars, you put on different skins for different virtual worlds, and then you play in that world and with that character. I’m not taking you to the game. I’m bringing the game to you.

If I can convince you of at least this much, then I have brought virtual community out of its cave and into the every day, and perhaps that will mean by the end of this lecture you might entertain the (admittedly still foreign notion) that digital virtual worlds are not nearly as far away and strange as they seem, and they are much more every day than we might think. I will also have equipped us with greater proficiency at appropriating some of the core strengths of the virtual world that can “play” in real life ministry contexts.

Here’s how we will proceed. I am going to walk us through two popular and accessible games, and after describing the game briefly, I will draw out one or two key insights into the new culture of learning indicated by these games. Both games are digital, virtual worlds. There are so many games out there that I had to limit this survey, so I followed the rule that I was aiming for massively multiplayer environments that are played by a wide variety of players, games I am personally familiar with, and games people I know personally play. I will walk through games in approximately the order of age group that plays them. World of Warcraft is more a high school and college age phenomenon (although not exclusively so). Second Life is especially a world of young adults transitioning into middle age.[5]

As a busy youth leader, you would be right to be asking at this point, before we jump in, what the pay off is for you. Why does this matter? Two short quotes that convinced me of the profound significance of exploring this topic. First, danah boyd, an ethnographer in the area of teen networked publics had this to say in her recent book: today’s teens are “the first generation to have to publicly articulate itself, to have to write itself into being as a precondition of social participation.”[6] In other words, in addition to what you see teens doing daily in school and church—writing themselves into being through their clothes, music choices, friendship patterns, and so on—they are also doing so in the digital world, and in fact in their digital networking patterns, that is the only way to be there, by writing yourself into being.

The other insight came from Pete Ward, in his book Liquid Church. “Liquid church expresses the way that ecclesial being is extended and made fluid through mediation. The liquid Church moves beyond the traditional boundaries of congregation and denomination through the use of communication and information technologies.”[7] How the church is mediated as new technologies arise is itself a missiological topic. “A central missiological issue for the Western Church relates to how it chooses to react to the mediation of the spiritual in popular culture.”[8] Although my profession is as a Lead Pastor of an ELCA congregation, my tribal identities are deeply tied to youth ministry and mission work. Boyd and others have convinced me that the digital world is increasingly where teens will be, and Ward has convinced me that new mediated forms of pop culture present us with a new missiological challenge.

Finally, a few statistics (because really, you’re going to trust me more if I offer some summary of statistical research, right?). All of this is from a 2008 Pew Internet and American Life study on Teens, Video Games, and Civics:

1. Almost all teens play games. Fully 97% of teens ages 12-17 play computer, web, portable, or console games.

2. Youth play many different kinds of video games. 80% of teens play five or more different game genres, and 40% play eight or more types of games. Anecdotally, although at the time of the Pew study Madden was the top played game, with Halo a close second, many youth workers I know now report the top games youth play are Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.

3. Gaming is often a social experience for teens. For most teens, gaming is a social activity and a major component of their overall social experience.

4. Playing games with others in person was related to increased civic and political engagement, but playing with others online was not.

World of Warcraft

Perhaps 10% of the high schoolers of my congregation I know primarily through Facebook. Complex family situations preclude them from attending church with any regularity. I receive regular messages, questions, and comments from them, and I would say, without a doubt, that in some cases we know each other well. The ambient intimacy of Facebook as a networked public augments our face-to-face relationships, and in at least a few cases, is the primary relationship itself.

In a couple of particular cases, I have come to know these youth primarily because of their interest in gaming. Some are struggling with various emotional issues. Face-to-face with people, they often feel uncomfortable, even unsafe. Chat on Facebook, or chat on World of Warcraft, is easier. They are literally more open and themselves. For better or worse, increasingly this is true for some youth. Sherry Turkle, in her important nearly fifteen year exploration of our lives in the digital terrain, recently published as Alone Together, writes that many people prefer texting or chat because in a phone call “’there is a lot less boundness to a person.’ In a call we can learn too much or say too much, and things could get ‘out of control.’ A call has insufficient boundaries… when texting, [we] feel a reassuring distance. If things start to go in a direction [we don’t] like, we can easily redirect the conversation—or cut it off.”[9]

So an admission: although I don’t like texting that much because it is a less native medium for me than e-mail or chat, I totally get this impulse. I like control and I bet you do too, even if we feel some guilt admitting that fact. And in fact past forms of media allowed for similar control over the pattern of communication, letter writing being until recently the pre-eminent example.

Back to these high school youth—our shared interest, and a good part of why we are in relationship in the first place, has to do with WoW. They play regularly, and noticed that I had been exploring World of Warcraft and posting about my discoveries on Facebook. One evening, very very late at night (yes, I was on Facebook and playing WoW after midnight) we began messaging back and forth about why they play, lots of conversation about game mechanics, and preferences for either solo or social gaming. Interestingly, they observed that their communal game play had reduced at the same time as some of their RL communality had also decreased. Messaging with the pastor was one step back into greater levels of game sociality and real life sociality.

Generally speaking, as we noted in statistics on game play from the Pew study, teens play games with others. This is not necessarily, or even primarily, by playing with others on-line, but can include playing with others in the same room. With increased band-width and improved game functionality, more and more gamers are playing games on-line with others (very popular games in addition to WoW that function in this way include Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Halo, and Star Wars: The Old Republic). Regardless of whether they play remotely on-line or together in the same room sharing equipment and consoles, gaming is social.

James Paul Gee, professor of Literary Studies at Arizona State University and author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, points out the way in which many adults might miss this point via a short story:

Let me tell you a little story about the social nature of gaming. I don’t, in general, encourage baby boomers to rush off and play video games, since the games are often quite hard and can be frustrating for people not willing to confront their own, perhaps rigidified, learning muscles in a new setting. Nonetheless, some older people do run off to play for the first time when they hear me talk (and, indeed, there are a growing number of older gamers these days). One older adult who tried a video game after hearing one of my talks did, indeed, become seriously frustrated. Then his 21-year-old gamer stepson came into the room and asked him, “What are you doing?” The man said, “Trying to learn to play this damn video game.” The son said “For heaven’s sake, why would you do that alone?” Ah, so, here is one good learning principle built into gamers, not just games.

This, I would add, would be a good learning principle to build into church-goers and youth ministers as well. Why do we try to learn the hard stuff alone? [pause here to ponder this before continuing]

So I started exploring some of the ways in which games like WoW are themselves intrinsically formative. In the case of WoW, a signature of the game is that players can join together into guilds. In fact, to really succeed in the gaming world and accomplish some of the most complicated quests, and to earn more XP as a result, the game prefers you work in guilds, sometimes even requires it. Many guilds organize raids with a raiding party of 25 players (from around the world) who go on a 6-8 hour quest to accomplish their goal. In order to succeed at the quest, players also need to extensive research on the WoW Wikia, or use analytic tools to confirm which spells and other items will be most helpful at succeeding. Ultimately, there is also a kind of intrinsic discovery, the group learns together (and sometimes surprises itself) with its success. This raiding culture is deeply and profoundly communal in ways rare even in real world environments.

A friend who is professor of New Testament at the University of Aberdeen in England, and an avid gamer, took some time to describe to me what he has learned participating in a long-standing guild in WoW. He writes:

Relative to your specific thesis, I wonder whether there isn't a comparison to be made between the catechumenate and the process of enculturating new members into a MMORPG guild. I mention this because of my experience as a guild admin and class lead (priest, of course) in the very long-standing Warcraft guild We Know whose guild master is Joi Ito, recently named head of the MIT Media Lab. Joi has lots of published presentations and interviews on how leading and organising a guild taught him about corporate management, and he would probably talk with you if you asked nicely. But I was at work on the backend, so to speak, trying to help cultivate customs for positive social interaction. Our guild didn't allow racist, sexist, offensive language in /guild chat, and regulated group behaviour in a way as grown-up as we could possibly achieve. You may be a gamer yourself, or may know about games — that they tend to bring out the early-adolescent male child in players — and we early on had a lot of trouble with overexcited members saying they were going to fuckin' rape some Horde, or someone else shouldn't be such a girl, or that such-and-such an item was gay, or that their group leader was a retard. We had to pull people aside, gently and persistently, to say that we just don't talk that way in We Know; that we have members who are gay, who are women, who have children with Down syndrome, who have survived rape. Some people quit the guild, some people groused a lot about "free speech", but by the time I retired two years ago, we hadn't had to rebuke anyone in longer than I can remember. If you joined We Know, you signed up for our way. The longevity, popularity, and success of the guild suggest that something is going right.

Notice that AKMA focuses on the development of communal norms in a community that is on “a way.” There is both sensitivity to the real life situations of those who play the game, but also a sense of what can maintain continuity and commitment in the game itself. This is such a different Christian reaction to the gaming context than is typical in places where leaders are focused around boundaries for game play itself rather than seeing boundaries in game as being in the service of gaming virtual community.

James Paul Gee a concise list of what we can learn from gaming and implement in our own teaching and leadership of youth ministry:

1) Good video games offer players strong identities. You aren’t simply a number or statistic in a confirmation classroom—instead, you are lead hunter, or the priest

2) They make players think like scientists. Trial and error are a big part of gaming. Again, this is a non-scientific observation, but I wonder if we allow the same kind of trial and error in our faith formation practices in youth ministry.

3) They let players be producers, not just consumers. In a game like Minecraft, for example, the environment is built by the players. In a game like WoW, there is an entire community around the game producing Wikia content and other resources (see also, for example, the whole phenomenon of “Halo Nation”; http://www.wowwiki.com/Portal:Main).

4) They lower the consequences of failure. If your avatar dies, you can resurrect it, and continue the game from that point. Do we let youth fail, and build a gaming culture in our churches where the consequences of failure are lowered?

5) They allow players to customize the game to fit their learning and playing styles. I don’t even think most youth in our churches think they are allowed to customize the church game, even though the regularly customize other domains in which they are participants, and often at an incredibly high level of proficiency.

6) Because of all the preceding, they feel a real sense of agency, ownership, and control. It’s their game.[10]

This last insight bears special attention. When I talk with gamers, they clearly feel mastery within their domain. They don’t need special advice from experts, or permission to navigate the world. They are self-engaged, self-directed, and often incredibly skilled. I am learning from them, not the other way around.

This happens because there are systems built into the game itself that build this kind of mastery and confidence. Youth ministries and churches would do well to learn from this. “Good games offer players a set of challenging problems and then let them practice these until they have routinized their mastery. Then the game throws a new class of problem at the player (sometimes this is called a ‘boss’), requiring them to rethink their taken-for-granted mastery. In turn, this new mastery is consolidated through repetition (with variation), only to be challenged again. This cycle of consolidation and challenge is the basis of the development of expertise in any domain.”[11]

The power of these learning strategies in game is that they make use of a different kind of rhetoric from church rhetoric, an intrinsic process for learning rather than the typical extrinsic learning strategies so popular in word or information based systems. They engage in what is sometimes called procedural rhetoric. “Procedural rhetoric encompasses any medium that accomplishes its inscription via processes.”[12] You learn the game by playing the game. You learn what the game has to teach by participating in the gaming world rather than reading something about it. You can’t really even comprehend what Wow, or Second Life is, until you actually inhabit that gaming world for a while, because it accomplishes its inscription via processes. “We must recognize the persuasive power and expressive power of procedurality. Processes influence us. They seed changes in our attitudes, which in turn, and over time, change our culture. As players of videogrames and other computational artifacts, we should recognize procedural rhetoric as a new way to interrogate our world, to comment on it, to disrupt and challenge it. As creators and players of videogames, we must be conscious of the procedural claims we make, why we make them, and what kind of social fabric we hope to cultivate through the processes we unleash on the world.”[13]

[pause]

Second Life

I inhabit Second Life primarily as a monastic. My avatar, Miroslav Tweedy (Miroslav is one of my favorite Slavic names, and Tweedy is the last name of Jeff, lead singer for Wilco) wears an attractive Roman style cassock that is a case of completely over dressing for mid-week worship. For the early days after my rez date on SL I wandered the world a bit in order to explore (and in those days dressed like Neo from The Matrix—are you seeing a trend?), but more recently have really focused my time there simply praying Compline in Christian community, especially with the St. Matthew’s-by-the-Sea (http://stmattsinsl.wordpress.com/) community, an Episcopal chapel of peace for all people built in memory of Matthew Shepard and all LGBT victims of violence. I have also participated somewhat regularly in a bible study hosted by an ELCA pastor (John Stiles) on Thursday evenings, and visited worship at the Anglican Cathedral in Second Life and a few other worshipping communities.

“Second Life players are engaged in nothing less than the collaborative produsage of the virtual world itself; ‘virtually every object, terrain, and animation is the creative work of its membership.”[14] In some ways, this makes SL less a game, and more a multi-user environment. Like the real world, this means SL varies widely from locale to locale, because every place is built out of the creativity and input of users. Here’s a list of just a few of the possible destinations in Second Life: churches, dance clubs, historical reconstructions of particular eras then available for role playing and game play (Westerns, Steampunk, etc.), built environments that replicate RL (the Sistine Chapel, downtown Moscow), futuristic universes (Star Wars), reproductions of fictional worlds, universities and businesses that offer classes, advertising, etc. in world, shops where avatars can purchase clothing, furniture, carpets, and much more.

Second Life is the preeminent virtual world for exploring the concept of produsage, because at the same time that folks in world are consumers of the Second Life products, and purchase linden dollars to make use of their, they are intimately also the producers of the environment on every possible level. Second Life as a virtual world is what it is because of produsage.

Core principles of produsage:

1) Open to user participation: In many ways it is dramatically open in ways most real life context have trouble imagining.

2) Communal evaluation: I have sat after worship some evenings while the worship leader asks us how we should rebuild the chapel. The community gets to evaluate the built space and give input into what everything should look like.

3) Fluid heterarchies: People come and go from the environment, sometimes they are deeply involved, later they take a lesser leadership role, and there is a fluidity to who is in charge and who is participating that is dramatic. Recently, I have seen an increase in this same pattern in real life congregations.

4) Permanently unfinished: Prodused environments are never “done.” That is one of their great strengths. Ponder how this would work in a church setting.

These core principles of produsage are absolutely the kind of patterns we would do well to creatively appropriate for ministry contexts, or even figure out how to participate in as ministry itself.

I will admit that my own participation in Second Life is probably enabled by my long-standing participation in what I might call sci-fi geek culture. However, there is more to the whole geek thing than first meets the eye, and it is this point with which I’d like to conclude. I’m sure you know geeks. Perhaps you are a geek yourself. Increasingly, educational theorists have been recognizing the extent to which the path to geekdom is itself a profound learning culture.

Here is how it works. Most people who end up geeks start out just hanging around in the world in which they eventually geek out. They rez in Second Life and go where people are clubbing or dancing, just to meet and try out things. Youth in school, even adults here at the E, do this as well. The central question is: What is my relationship to others?

Eventually, some of those who are hanging out start to mess around. In addition to attending to relationships in the environment, messing around includes beginning to pay attention to the environment itself. For me in SL, this happened when I bought my first clothes for my avatar rather than going around in the free clothes provided when you first rez in world. I started to research, at least a little bit, how to buy land and build things. This openness to the environment asks the question, “What am I able to explore?” Finally, when you explore, and go more and more deeply embodied into the world, eventually one day you wake up and realize you are geeking out. “Geeking out involves learning to navigate esoteric domains of knowledge and practice and participating in communities that traffic in these forms of experience.”[15] The geek question is, “How can I utilize the available resources, both social and technological, for deep exploration?”

I might conclude by simply inviting us to ask what is perhaps the intriguing, challenging, and essential question: How can we invite our young people on a journey that results in them becoming church geeks?” Since geeking out is so engaging, so playful, and so joyous, it is for this reason above all others that we need to learn from the virtual worlds culture, collectives, and varieties of play.

Play is a disposition, not just engaging with a game. It is an essential strategy for embracing change, rather than a way for growing out of it. Even while developmental psychologists are routinely coming to the conclusion that play-based learning has inarguable benefits compared to other approaches to learning, our culture struggles to actually embrace play.

This is unfortunate, because as we might intuit if we sit with the concept of play for a while, openness to play as a way of embracing the world is not dissimilar to ritual and senses of the sacred. By delegitimizing play, or by classifying it as something done only under certain occasions (to relax, to begin a learning session, to do when we are little but not grown up) we fail to embrace it as a disposition. Consequently, we miss out on it as an important resource for faith. “Play provides the opportunity to leap, experiment, fail, and continue to play with different outcomes—in other words to riddle one’s way through a mystery.”[16] Similarly, by discouraging play in social contexts, we are at risk of killing rather than harnessing the power of collectives. “Any effort to define or direct collectives would destroy the very thing that is unique and innovative about them.”[17]

Inasmuch as we have not encouraged children to play with faith itself, to toy with the divine mysteries, and to do so collectively, with each other and their family and friends, we have ill-equipped them to dwell in mystery and paradox. No wonder so many wander away from the faith when they begin to encounter challenges and aporia. We have offered them no playful equipment to gain an epiphany by way of playing with the aporia. We can learn so much from the new culture of gaming. Are we courageous enough to do so?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blascovich, Jim and Jeremy Bailenson. Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New

Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.

Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA:

The MIT Press, 2010.

Bruns, Axel. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage.

New York: Peter Lang, 2008

Burgess, Jean and Joshua Green. Youtube: Online Video and Participatory Culture.

Cambridge: Polity. 2009.

Campbell, Heidi. Exploring Religious Community Online: We Are One in the Network.

New York: Peter Lang. 2005.

Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. New York:

W. W. Norton. 2008.

Detweiler, Craig. Halos and Avatars: Playing Video Games with God. Louisville, KY:

Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

Doctorow, Cory. Makers. New York: Tor, 2010.

Estes, Douglas. SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World. Grand Rapids, MI:

Zondervan. 2009.

Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy.

Second Edition. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Gibson, William. Distrust This Particular Flavor. Putnam Adult, 2012.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York

University Press, 2006.

Thomas, Douglas and John Seely Brown. A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the

Imagination for a World of Constant Change. Self-published, 2011.

Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from

Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011.

Games Mentioned in this Lecture

Minecraft. http://www.minecraft.net A quirky low-res environment that seems almost like an exact mashup of Second Life and Legos. The building process is like Legos, the gaming is like the openness of Second Life. Like a big digital sandbox (with a bit of World of Warcraft tossed in)

Second Life. http://secondlife.com (accessed January 16, 2012). A completely open virtual world created by its users. Not exactly a game, it is an actual virtual world. Always free to play, but you need to purchase Linden dollars if you want to own real estate, etc.

World of Warcraft. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/ (accessed January 31, 2012). Still the largest MMORPG on the web, a vast gaming universe with over 12,000,000 active subscribers (who pay a monthly fee of about $15 to play the game on-line). Free to play to level 20, with some limitations.

Pew Study on Teens, Video Games, and Civics: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2008/Teens-Video-Games-and-Civics.aspx

[1] James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy

[2] For an approach to Wikipedia as a gaming environment, which is the inspiration for this introduction, see Jennifer McGonigal’s Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (Penguin Press, 2011), 230.

[3] Douglas Estes, 79.

[4] Douglas Estes, 29.

[5] I’m in the process of researching Minecraft, a younger youth game, and will add it as an appendix to this lecture on-line.

[6] http://www.danah.org/papers/TakenOutOfContext.pdf, page 120.

[7] Pete Ward, Participation and Mediation, 137.

[8] 190.

[9] Turkle, 190.

[10] James Paul Gee, 216

[11] James Paul Gee, 217.

[12] Ian Bogost, 46.

[13] Ian Bogost, 340.

[14] Axel Bruns, 298.

[15] Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, 104.

[16] Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, 98.

[17] Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, 54.

Nowhere and Nothing: Finding God in the Trash

2012-02-09T14:10:00.001-06:00

If you'd like to read another example of why I cherish my "theological" friendship with Greg Walter, check out his new post at our developing Steampunk Theology blog.

Crowdsourcing an ELCA Youth Ministry Network Workshop Outline

2012-02-05T23:42:00.002-06:00

Is this a workshop you would race to attend? What interests you? What does it lack? How do you react to it?

Virtual Community, Collectives, and Play:

The New Culture of Learning

The Reverend Clint Schnekloth

ELCA Youth Extravaganza

New Orleans, February 2012

Second, and this is more a psychological theory, when you came to this Extravaganza, you came as an avatar. You are in all likelihood not exactly the same person you are in other contexts—with your youth, in your church, in your family. Here at the Extravaganza, you are the avatar you have selected to represent yourself in this social constructed environment, in New Orleans, at a conference with other youth leaders. Some of our avatars are quite a bit like the avatars we put on in other places. Some others of us “present” quite a bit different here than elsewhere.

All of which forced me to reconsider my opening gambit. Since I am convinced, radically convinced, that ministry in digital virtual contexts is an essential next step in pastoral and youth ministry, I had to find some way both to attract participants to a workshop on the topic, and keep you here and interested for an hour. Even more radically, I’d like to build a cohort of ELCA youth leaders who would entertain the possibility of doing cooperative ministry in some of these virtual frontiers.

Here’s how we will proceed. I am going to walk us through four popular and accessible games, and after describing the game briefly for those unfamiliar with the game, I will draw out one or two key insights into the new culture of learning indicated by these games. All four games are digital, virtual worlds. There are so many games out there that I had to limit this survey, so I followed the rule that I was aiming for massively multiplayer environments that are played by a wide variety of players, games I am personally familiar with, and games people I know personally play. I will walk through these four games in approximately the order of age group that plays them. Minecraft is popular with younger (though not exclusively younger) youth. World of Warcraft is more a high school and college age phenomenon. Second Life is especially a world of young adults transitioning into middle age. Everybody is on Facebook (which isn’t a game—and yet it is).

I. Minecraft (Shared sandbox):

II. World of Warcraft (communal norms and narrative):

III. Second Life (Worship):

IV. Facebook (???)

[mine bibliographic resources, see below, and weave key concepts into the analysis of each game]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blascovich, Jim and Jeremy Bailenson. Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New

Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.

Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA:

The MIT Press, 2010.

Bruns, Axel. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage.

New York: Peter Lang, 2008

Burgess, Jean and Joshua Green. Youtube: Online Video and Participatory Culture.

Cambridge: Polity. 2009.

Campbell, Heidi. Exploring Religious Community Online: We Are One in the Network.

New York: Peter Lang. 2005.

Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. New York:

W. W. Norton. 2008.

Detweiler, Craig. Halos and Avatars: Playing Video Games with God. Louisville, KY:

Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

Doctorow, Cory. Makers. New York: Tor, 2010.

Estes, Douglas. SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World. Grand Rapids, MI:

Zondervan. 2009.

Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy.

Second Edition. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Gibson, William. Distrust This Particular Flavor. Putnam Adult, 2012.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York

University Press, 2006.

Thomas, Douglas and John Seely Brown. A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the

Imagination for a World of Constant Change. Self-published, 2011.

Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from

Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011.

Games Mentioned in this Lecture

[1] For an approach to Wikipedia as a gaming environment, which is the inspiration for this introduction, see Jennifer McGonigal’s Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (Penguin Press, 2011), 230.

Finding Jesus in All the Normal Stuff

2012-02-05T15:30:00.000-06:00

The audio for this sermon illustrates three things I try to do regularly in preaching on the gospel of Mark in these early months of the year.

1) I try to highlight some major themes that are going to keep popping throughout the year, such as the pacing and drama of the gospel, the immediacy of it, the focus on healing and casting out of demons and preaching the kingdom of God, the secrecy motif, and so on.

2) Map the text over our daily lives so as to illustrate in very concrete ways what Jesus then means for us as Jesus now. In this case, mapping the 24 hours described in the text over our next 24 hours.

3) The last three minutes of the sermon actually occur in real time immediately after praying the Lord's Prayer and before the distribution of communion. At this point in the liturgy, I often do an additional one or two minute tie in that connects with the sermon, so as to illustrate the deep connection between Word & Sacrament.

Thanks for listening. Here's the link:

http://goodshepherdnwa.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/02-05-12S.mp3

Fish on Fridays

2012-02-04T23:24:00.000-06:00

Very often scruples concerning the form of our religious practices can distract from the purpose of the practice itself. Let me offer an example from my own tradition. Lutherans, together with many other Christians around the world, observe the season of Lent. This is a six week, forty day season of preparation, a journey towards the week when we commemorate Christ's death and resurrection. These special final days--Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, and Easter (sometimes called the Triduum, or Three Days)--are the shape our worship takes to tell what Jesus then means for us as Jesus now.

The Lenten season begins with Ash Wednesday (February 22), a penitential day on which our churches mark the foreheads of the faithful with the sign of the cross in ashes, remembering our mortality. In some communities (most famously New Orleans), Ash Wednesday is preceded by Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras), a time for carnivals and festivities in order to get fatty and rich foods and habits out of the system in preparation for the leaner Lenten journey.

Historically, Christians have observed various kinds of fasts during Lent, sometimes complete fasts (no food, only water), but more typically abstention from certain kinds of foods, especially meat. The most famous of these practices was a meatless Friday. Christians could eat fish on Friday, but not regular meats.

McDonalds knows that many Christians still give up meat on Fridays in Lent, so a few years ago they came out with a new sandwich, a double fish fillet meal. The first time I saw this advertised, it made me so mouth-wateringly hungry that I immediately went through the drive-thru and ordered some of that processed food goodness. There really is nothing like frozen fish deep batter fried and breaded and slobbered with tartar sauce in a pasty white bun. The whole thing just screams "Lenten Fast!"

However, as any rational person can observe (not me, I'm still ravenously chomping on my sandwich), eating a two patty fish sandwich does not really count as a "fast." It's an example of a practice that has come completely untethered from the original purpose of fasting during Lent. It's not at all clear how it honors the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

At this point, the pious anti-ritualists swoop in and say, "Hey, look, all of these rituals made up by human beings are wrong. Don't observe them. Just believe in Jesus." Or I think they say something like that. So there are many Christian communities that refuse to observe Lent or other church seasons because they perceive them as too ritualistic or distracting. There is some validity to their concerns, but by throwing the baby out with the bath-water, they divest themselves of a wonderful opportunity to live an embodied faith. As problematic as practices might be inasmuch as they distract us from the core purpose of the practice, they still are the primary way we live out our faith. Practices really do make us who we are, and reinforce what we believe in substantive ways.

Which is why I like my own tradition's approach to rituals. Our confessional document says, "Concerning church regulations made by human beings, it is taught to keep those that may be kept without sin and that serve to maintain peace and good order in the church, such as specific celebrations, festivals, etc. However, people are also instructed not to burden consciences with them as if such things were necessary for salvation. Moreover, it is taught that all rules and traditions made by human beings for the purpose of appeasing God and of earning grace are contrary to the gospel and the teaching concerning faith in Christ."

Feel free to translate this insight into your own religious context. The point is this: keep your traditions and religious practices inasmuch as they strengthen your faith, and maintain peace and good order with your neighbors. But keep a close watch over them, and when they start to burden your conscience, take some time to revisit how and why you engage in the practice, and make sure it is furthering in positive ways the journey of faith on which you have been called.

Is that a double fish fillet I hear calling?

Finding God in the Trash

2012-02-03T14:51:00.002-06:00

Check out Dr. Gregory Walter's essay at the new Steampunk Theology blog.

http://steampunktheology.blogspot.com/view/sidebar

Steampunk theology

2012-02-02T06:15:00.003-06:00

Experimenting with a new, brass encrusted and nerdy sci-fi theme, on Steampunk Theology. Starting with a test run to see if there is energy and interest:

http://steampunktheology.blogspot.com/

Or I might just weave steampunk reflections into Lutheran confessions itself, since Lutherans are kind of intrinsically steampunk. What do you think? Just dispense goggles to all the organists and we're set?

What the church can learn from the presidential primary

2012-01-31T21:20:00.002-06:00

Everything I say in what follows is probably wrong. Or at least alternative construals are possible, even likely.

Keep that in mind--you have been duly warned. This applies to everything that has ever been published here at Lutheran Confessions... nothing is beyond critique.

However, good luck getting any kind of disclaimer like this from a presidential candidate or a sitting president. If you want confessions, repentance, contrition, anything in that vein, you are better off reading this blog than watching a presidential primary debate or a SOTU. Even here, repentance is rare, because true repentance is rare, period, but it is uniquely rare in the rarefied air of national politics.

With that disclaimer firmly in place, let me suggest some things we as people of the church might learn from this long slow slog we call the Republican presidential primary (all of which applies, mutatis mutandis, to lessons we might learn from many other primaries past or future).

Doggéd persistence

At the first sniff of failure, it seems often the church I have lived in packs up its bags and moves on. If there aren't enough votes, if there isn't something like consensus, then it isn't worth the battle. Let the nay-sayers have their way. Heaven forbid anything should ever fail, at least by dint of our risk-taking.

However, look at these primary candidates. They aren't even yet running for the actual presidency, they are merely jockeying for a Republican party nomination, and they do not quit, even after three, or four, or five primaries have illustrated how unlikely their eventual nomination might be. They believe in themselves. They believe in their message. The people who support them do also (nowhere is this more true than in the Ron Paul campaign).

If 1/10th of our churches lived from this "hope and a prayer" mentality, we would live in a very different church. Maybe even if just 1 in 100 did.

How to fight

Fight hard, fight mean, attack the front runner, don't beat around the bush. Attack the one in front of you, but if the one nipping at your heels starts to catch up, turn around and bite, hard. Lest we think this doesn't apply at all in the church, go re-read Acts 20, Paul's final exhortation to the Ephesians before he sets his face towards Rome (the D.C. of his day)

Therefore I declare to you this day that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you, 27 for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God. 28 Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son. 29 I know that after I have gone, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. 30 Some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them. 31 Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to warn everyone with tears.

Okay, so the current political debates and the in-fighting between Paul and his "savage wolves" are not completely commensurable conversations. Nevertheless, we need to fight for what is good and true and faithful more often than we seem to be willing to.

Your resumé matters

Don't just tell us what you plan to do, what your vision is. Stop waxing eloquent over the vision statement or the five-year plan. Show us what you've done. Publish your tax records. Let us know how you voted. Similarly, when people chatter along about what the church they are a part of should do, or be like, remind them, and remind yourself, of this important political question, "What's your track record?" Stop saying, "We should really... our church should really..." Start saying, "I will... I have..."

And so does your vision

That being said, your vision for the future matters. Many people will actually overlook your past if your vision for the future is compelling. It helps if you are articulate, although not a requirement (see again Acts 20, where Paul talks all night and puts a young man to sleep, who then subsequently falls out of a third story window and dies, only to be raised by Paul). We want to know where you plan to take us. People flock to a church with a compelling vision for where it is going.

The election before the election is as important as the election

The primary can help shape the conversation that will ensue later (again, see what Ron Paul is up to). Even if you lose the vote, you might garner a win for your ideology or position. Get into the conversation. Shake things up. The conversations we have leading up to God-sized movements in the church are themselves already Spirit-inspired and important. Change happens before change.

Hair matters

'Nuf said.

Go door to door

Go door to door, county to county, not because that all by itself will work the magic, but because it will work some magic, and by getting out with people, you will learn who your constituency is. Hoofing it around the country, around the neighborhood, around your church, is as much about what you learn as it is about the message you are sharing. There is no shortcut. Get out there. And then stick to it, day after day after day after day after day after day.

Cater to the rich, message the middle class, ignore the poor

Unfortunately, I list this one last as a message the church writ large has already learned from the world, when in fact the church should be the prophetic voice call our nation and leaders and culture to account for their failure. We are utterly complicit in this problem. It is an unmitigated tragedy.

So really this is "what I wish the politicians would learn from the church." Politics in this election (and every election I can remember) is about messaging the middle class to comfort them with the knowledge that it really is all about them, while simultaneously protecting and catering to the rich (who fund the elections) and caring not a whit for the poor, many of whom don't vote and very few of whom contribute to political campaigns. This is also true of the church. A church built of the poor would struggle financially, and I remember a good teacher I had once saying, "The reason I remained a non-Christian for so long is because I grew up taking our family's laundry to the landromat, and I realized there was not one church in my community that targeted us, a family that takes their laundry to the laundry mat."

To quote Paul one last time in that amazing chapter of Acts,

33 I coveted no one’s silver or gold or clothing. 34 You know for yourselves that I worked with my own hands to support myself and my companions. 35 In all this I have given you an example that by such work we must support the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, for he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

* And yes, I really did find a photo, by Googling "church laundromat," of Mitt Romney doing his own laundry. No joke.

Who are you inviting to church this Sunday?

2012-01-31T14:37:00.002-06:00

Most pastors kind of expect their parishioners to invite friends and neighbors (or camels) to church. Right?

However, if we take the Ghandian exhortation seriously, "Be the change you seek in the world," pastors should probably ask themselves:

"Who are you personally inviting to worship this Sunday?"

All the clergy in my denomination, the ELCA, all inviting one friend or family member to church this week would go a long way towards reversing the decline of our denomination, and it would be authentic leadership by example, with integrity.

So, dear pastors who are reading this: Who are you inviting, personally, face-to-face, to come to your church this Sunday?

I'm inviting a nearby neighbor.

And if you are reading this and you aren't a pastor, I have the same question: Who are you inviting to church this Sunday?

What to do during Lent

2012-01-30T21:29:00.003-06:00

Title for whole season: ReLent (Five weeks beginning February 26th): Twitter account to follow through the season: @re_lent

For our tradition Lent is a season of repentance, which includes a) sorrow for our sin, b) trust that God in Christ truly forgives us, and c) plans to do better. This Lent, we "relent" from some of the ways we have failed to respond fully to God's mission for us in the world, we trust that Christ is forgiving us and the Spirit leading us, and we look at creative ways to do better.

For the five weeks of Lent, we focus on key themes drawn from the tremendous little book Exponential: How You and Your Friends Can Start a Missional Movement:

We Multiply: Did you know a multiplying missional movement can start with you?

We Dream: Are we dreaming God-sized dreams?

We Connect: Are you in a group that is connecting the unconnected to God?

We Apprentice: Who has invested in you? Who can you pour yourself into to encourage and develop a leader?

We Catalyze: Are we identifying artists to lead us and catalyze God's mission in the world?

How will we engage these topics during Lent? The whole congregation will hear a big picture message on the topic on Sundays in connection with the Old Testament lesson for that Sunday. The themes tie in surprisingly well to the OT lessons.

Then, there will be a "going deeper" time Wednesdays following our soup supper and Holden Evening Prayer. Staff will discuss the book and topic weekly at staff meeting. Council and other leadership team will attend ALL Sunday and Wednesday services to lock in on the message and discuss in their committee and council meetings. We will offer a book discussion face-to-face for the whole congregation (see details at the beginning of Lent), as well as a Facebook group discussion.

Come get marked with ashes on February 22^nd for Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the season, and commit to full participation in these events as we challenge ourselves to live as fully devoted Christ-followers in the real-lent world.

Six Simple Coaching Questions

2012-01-30T14:44:00.001-06:00

1. How are you?
2. What are you celebrating?
3. What challenges are you experiencing?
4. What do you plan to do about those challenges?
5. How can I help you?
6. How can I pray for you?

Hyping Hyphenated Lutherans

2012-01-27T22:06:00.002-06:00

Two "threads" on "emerging" Christianity have caught our collective attention in recent years. It seems there are equal parts excitement and confusion around this emergence, and so I make an attempt here to summarize the threads and especially highlight how they influence contemporary Lutheran theology and practice.

Theological Emergence

The first thread, a largely theological conversation about a "new kind of Christianity," has been especially championed by Brian McClaren, Phyllis Tickle, and Philip Clayton.

Because I don't think everyone needs to read the works of these three theologians in great detail, I offer an overly simplistic (but hopefully useful) summary of the argument.

I start with Philip Clayton. Clayton, whose areas of academic specialty include the philosophy of religion and the religion and science conversation, essentially ventures out into slightly uncharted waters for himself and makes a proposal for the centrality of transforming theological discourse (the book is Transforming Theologies) to the emerging church conversation. For Clayton, emerging = progressive (what some would label liberal). His book is probably helpful as an introductory text in theology for seminaries of a liberal persuasion, but it does not break nearly as much new theological ground as most reviewers have claimed.

Phyllis Tickle also observes an emerging theological shift, but identifies it more out of an historical locus, what she terms The Great Emergence. She offers an attractive thesis, that the church emerges in a new and better form approximately every 500 years. Since we are now 500 years after the Reformation, and the Reformation was the last great emergence, we are ready for another one. Her thesis, which she substantiates on historical grounds, mirrors Clayton in some ways by seeing all churches in this era as not only emerging but also converging to slightly left of center.

Finally, Brian McLaren has essentially popularized the kinder, gentler, more open kind of Christianity so many North American Christians are seeking these days. His new kind of Christianity mostly popularizes what we might call progressive Christianity. It's not that the ideas are new, it's just that they are now popularized and offered to a wider and more receptive audience. Interestingly, McLaren also likes the word "transforming." The emergent conversation is enamored of its lingo.

Ecclesial/liturgical Emergence

The other thread is much more of an ecclesial and liturgical conversation. This is not to say that there are not also plenty of theological arguments within this conversation, but the direction tends towards how churches might be organized differently, and how communities might worship together differently.

It's hard to get a handle on precisely how to define this "emergence." Typically it is edgy stuff, ministry with the marginalized, in marginal places, but it also often has a hipness to it, an artistic edge, coupled with an ecumenical and winsome communality. I'm a fan of the emerging church conversation, and learn much from it. I think it reminds us to consider beauty, to reinscribe our everyday community practices with theological import and wisdom, and I don't think it hurts anything if it happens to be hip, happening, and culturally contextualized along the way.

It's also a conversation that successfully sells books.

There's a lot you can read on this topic. Maybe the best early survey was by my dissertation advisor, Ryan Bolger, in Emerging Churches. Bolger (together with co-author Eddie Gibbs) offer a research based summary including 9 core practices of the emerging church:

The nine (9) core practices are:
1. Identifying with Jesus (and his way of life)
2. Transforming secular space (overcoming the secular/sacred split)
3. Living as community (not strangers in proximity at a church service)
4. Welcoming the stranger (radical and gentle hospitality that is inclusive)
5. Serving with generosity (not serving the institution called "church," but people)
6. Participating as producers (not widgets in the church program)
7. Creating as created beings (this is a great chapter!)
8. Leading as a body (beyond control and the CEO model of leadership)
9. Merging ancient and contemporary spiritualities.

More recently, a nice collection has arrived: The Hyphenateds: How Emergence Christianity is Re-Traditioning Mainline Practices. The sub-title includes a favorite emergence term, "re-traditioning." Emerging churches think of themselves as re-traditioning more than innovating per se.

It is no surprise that many leaders in the emerging church movement, therefore, actually come out of an existing tradition, or remain in one in order to re-tradition it. This book offers essays by such church leaders and pastors. Three of the essays are by ELCA Lutherans: Nadia Bolz-Weber (pastor of All Saints and Sinners, Denver, Colorado), Nate Frambach (professor of youth culture and mission at Wartburg Theological Seminary), and Timothy Snyder (scholar, editor, and a variety of other things in St. Paul, Minnesota).

The basic thesis of the book is that all the authors are hyphenated in that they combine/meld/weave/smash their own tradition into creative synergy/tension with emergence. Frambach, for example, coins the term "Luthermergent." He sees himself as an interested observer cataloging this Luthermergence. Bolz-Weber and Snyder are, each in their own way, signally embedded in the emergence itself as Lutherans who both benefit from, and struggle with, the way they are as hyphenateds.

I recommend you read the book in its entirety in order to hear the narrative in the voice of the authors. Hearing their collective voices (some hopeful, some angry, some aloof, some prophetic) gives a better sense than anything I've read recently of what this emergence, if it is anything at all, is like.

My basic thesis is that emergence is definitely something, but it isn't quite as sui generis or radical as some of the press would like to have us think (just read the copy on the back of all these emergent books to see what I mean).

I did, however, brainstorm a fun way to try and illustrate where various pastors, theologians, and individuals are on the Hyphenated Continuum. What, you might ask, is the hyphenated continuum? Well, if these folks are hyphenated, then they are "Lutheran-Emergent." But where are they on that continuum? To offer an analysis, I list a host of Lutherans, and then place an asterisk (*) at the place on the continuum in the term "Lutheran-Emergent" that best indicates how Lutheran or Emergent they are, at least from my perspective.

I push back into history in order to illustrate that actual emergence is nothing new, exactly, and also point out some important figures (I think especially of Schleiermacher) who were in all likelihood attempting something similar to the emerging church conversation while not labeling it as such.

I know this is completely nerdy and hokey, but bear with me. It's kind of fun (if a name below is unfamilar, google it... It's a mix of important historical theologians, living pastors and theologians, and a few others, all Lutheran--including Jesus).

Luther*an-Emergent: Nadia Bolz-Weber

L*utheran-Emergent: Nathan Frambach

Lutheran-E*mergent: Timothy Snyder

Lutheran-Emerge*nt: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Lutheran-*Emergent: Martin Luther

Lutheran-Emergent*: Friedrich Schleiermacher

Lutheran-Emergent *: Georg Hegel

*Lutheran-Emergent *: Friedrich Nietzsche (he was so emergent he was Lutheran again)

Lutheran-Emer*gent: Paul Tillich

Luthera*n-Emergent: Clint Schnekloth

Luth*eran-Emergent: Lois Malcolm

Luther*an-Emergent: Cynthia Moe-Lobeda

Lutheran-Emerge*nt: Katie von Bora

Lu*theran-Emergent: Mark Hanson

Lutheran*-*Emergent: Jesus

As you can see, life as a hyphenated Lutheran has been going on for some time, and it is more of a graded scale than an absolute form. I encourage you to create your own chart, and chart your own theologians, church leaders, and self.

Why does any of this matter? I think I can summarize it in this way. All of this matters because those of us who have been traditioned into Christ actually think it is worth considering what life together should look like, and we should be sensitive to the needs of religious others who are often alienated from our communities because our traditions have become hardened instead of held loosely and lovingly.

I think Lutheran-Emergents are trying to figure out, each in their peculiar ways, how to maintain a strong center with an open door.

Do you sleep?

2012-01-27T11:14:00.001-06:00

"I suspect I have spent just about exactly as much time actually writing as the average person my age has spent watching television, and that, as much as anything, may be the real secret here."

William Gibson says this about himself in his recent non-fiction essay collection, Distrust that Particular Flavor. He also says, "An individual who watches no television is still a scarcer beast than one who doesn't have an e-mail address," which I have found particularly true whenever I tell people I don't watch television.

And yes, I get most of my writing and other projects done in about the amount of time the average person watches television.

Which leaves some time for sleep.

A week in the life of a pastor

2012-01-26T10:47:00.001-06:00

Very few pastors have a "typical" week. Pastoral ministry is subject to the vagaries of human life even more than the typical profession, because the lives of so many people intersect the life of a pastor.

There are some constants: we always "land" at church for Sunday (and sometimes midweek) worship, scheduled weekly bible studies, small group, or staff meetings. But the other peculiar aspect of pastoral ministry is how free the pastor is, much of the time, to create their own schedule.

So here is a record of how I spent this past week. It's one way to do this work, certainly not the only way, but definitely a blessed and pleasing way to spend time in God's mission to the world.

Saturday (January 21): I was supposed to have been in Seattle, Washington attending the Phinney Ridge hosted Faith & Font training. A full Saturday immersed in learning about the catechumenal process that church engages in to form adults towards baptism and beyond. However, all flights were cancelled to Seattle for the snow. Instead I found myself at home, and so took the opportunity to finish work on my dissertation. I spent approximately four hours editing the introduction and first chapter according to the standards of Turabian. Spent most of the rest of the day with the family, but also, during some naps and in the evening after the children were in bed, finished reading two books, including one I'm reviewing for a journal (James Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree), and another we're using as the basis for our Lenten study (Dave and Jon Ferguson's Exponential: How You and Your Friends Can Start a Missional Church Movement). Also prayed through the church directory for all our members, and prayed for prayer requests from a Facebook thread.

Sunday: Three worship services, as presider and worship leader, while we hosted a guest preacher, Joe Liles, a mission developer in Bentonville. Cottage meetings at noon to listen to our congregation as they talked about their vision for mission for the Pastor of New Communities we are hoping to call. Home by 4 p.m., family time for the rest of the day. Wrote the review of James Cone's book that evening.

Monday: In at 8, caught up on office stuff, 9 a.m. conference call with some pastors all of whom are studying the Exponential book together. ELCA clergy from across the country, we formed the group as a side conversation on the ELCA Clergy Facebook page. Then some worship planning, time spent writing thank you notes to members of our congregation, then over to visit our 100 year old member who has recently gone on hospice care. Back to the office, printed dissertation material and took it to the post office, also started some sermon research. Somewhere in here I also wrote a blog post about the CEB.

Tuesday: Counseling/coaching sessions with folks at 8 and 10, visit to our Bears group in between, more worship planning (installation of council members, prep for a baptism class and baptism this Sunday), follow up phone calls, sorted a huge pile of books to start work on the next stage of the dissertation, and drafted a follow-up summary of the cottage meetings for our Wednesday e-blast. Home in the afternoon, then 6 p.m. bible study (Acts 19), 7-9 p.m. meeting with the call committee to summarize cottage meetings findings and plan next steps.

Wednesday: Morning at home, noon bible study (Acts 19 again), followed by a brief conversation about updating the front wall of our worship space, meeting at coffee shop at 1:30 p.m. pick up son from school, back to the coffee shop for a spiritual direction conversation, back to the church for final preps for my high school Augsburg Confession class, pre-baptism class at 5 p.m., 6 p.m. supper with our LOGOS group, 7 p.m. class with the high schoolers. Came home and cleaned the house in preparation for a birthday weekend for our soon-to-be one year old.

Thursday: Writing this blog post. Meeting to plan Lent and and our cultural change approach to leadership development and missional multiplication. Lunch with university students at Hog Haus. Finishing touches on sermon research and worship planning. Home for the afternoon. Evening church council meeting preceded by a finance committee meeting.

Friday and Saturday: Free days, family visiting for the big birthday.

The strange silence of the bible #CEBtour

2012-01-23T15:20:00.002-06:00

A few months ago, I embarked on a journey reading and evaluating the new Common English Translation of the Bible. Since the bible is such a big book, it can take quite a while to actually get into the swing of evaluating a new translation. Typically, I have found the easiest way to compare two translations is to simply open them up, side by side, and read passages one at a time, back and forth between the two translations. It is work mostly for the eye and the mind.

I have compared new translations with the NRSV before, and have typically found them wanting. As a result, the NRSV has remained my default and preferred bible translation. It is the translation most commonly in use in our denomination, it is a translation widely respected by scholars as well as the ecumenical Christian community. It is translated by "verbal equivalence," a style of translation common among some of the most respected bible translations such as the NIV, ESV, and KJV.

When I picked up the CEB, something about it caught my attention in a way no other translation had before. Since the NRSV truly is my heart translation, and the translation most common in our churches, it takes something really special to create a tipping point. I've never been attracted to paraphrase bibles like The Message or the New Living Translation, because generally speaking they represent the ideology and perspective of the translator more than the original text. And although I like word-for-word translations for study (like the NASB)--for devotional use, or use in groups or reading aloud, they lack that certain je ne sais quois.

A few weeks ago, I actually became convinced the CEB was worth experimenting with as a substitute or even a replacement for the NRSV. I've always struggled with the high level of English in the NRSV. It is difficult for children, and even many adults, to understand because it is translated at what language experts call level 11. The CEB, on the other hand, is written at level 7.

Another way to understand this is to say the CEB is translated into the English of USA Today, whereas the NRSV is written at the level expected of someone entering college.

The CEB is also verbal equivalence plus common english. This means the translators use contractions, and make other choices that ensure that the bible "reads" like people would speak common english today. If you'd like to understand this terminology better, and compare various translations and their approaches, there are some good charts out there.

--
So about three weeks ago we started using the CEB as our primary text for lectionary readings during worship. As much as I'd like to be able to make a decision about a translation simply by eyeballing it, the truth is that the bible was written to be heard, and it is impossible to tell whether it is a good translation until you are hearing it read out loud regularly.

Donald H. Juel, one of my favorite bible teachers, writes about this in a little essay he wrote before his untimely death a decade ago. The essay has been collected in a new volume of his work, Shaping the Scriptural Imagination: Truth, Meaning, and the Theological Interpretation of the Bible. It's a spectacular little volume, and I'm saddened that Juel isn't still available to teach in our seminaries. His was a bright light.

His essay's title is, "The Strange Silence of the Bible." He points out, "For most people in the church, the Bible is part of an oral/aural culture. For scholars, the Bible is studied largely in a silent world" (35). I can mistakenly assume that judgments concerning the relative merits of translations can be made while reading silently. When we started reading the CEB in worship, I realized the only way to really judge a bible translation is by how it sounds.

This is probably why a better way of describing these translations is they focus on "verbal equivalence" rather than "dynamic equivalence." Sometimes even what you write might not be as equivalent when read aloud than when written. The difference between spoken word and written word is important.

As we have been reading the CEB in our worship, I note two things. First, I don't think very many people have noticed that we have switched. The bible simply isn't that familiar to people anymore, so for those who don't have a "heart" translation in mind, whatever we read is always new to them, rather than a replacement for a familiar text.

However, a few folks more familiar with the NRSV have commented on the new translation. They notice a few phrases that simply don't ring the same way (the most recent was in Mark 1, where God says speaking of his Son Jesus in the NRSV, "With him I am well pleased," whereas in the CEB it says, "In him I find happiness."

What I notice myself is that the readings are easier to follow when I'm listening to them, especially if I put down my bulletin and just listen.

All of us always still have work to do practicing our reading of the bible out loud in public worship. There are better and worse ways to do this. It is unfortunate that our choirs rehearse, and pastors agonize over their sermons, but lectors do a lot less (generally speaking) to prepare their reading of the Scriptures in public worship.

I intend to offer a Lectors Boot Camp some time this spring to address issues around the public reading of Scripture, because it really does matter how we read. It is a kind of performance, and rehearsal helps.

Juel has this to say about rhetoric and the public reading of Scripture,

"Students at Princeton Seminary must take a year-long required course in speech. One facet of the course is devoted to public reading of the Scriptures. Students begin with a passage like the account of Belshazzar's feast in Daniel 5 and are asked to 'play' with different ways of reading the story. Resistance is great among most students who may not know the Bible but have a fixed notion of how it should be read--usually with great reverence and solemnity, but with very little inflection. The course aims to give them a greater sense of the possibility of the spoken word and of their options as readers. Their exercises include attention to the wide variety of literary genres from narratives to psalms to letters, while exploring oral means appropriate to the public performance of such material. In view of my own experience as a member of congregations where Bible reading is a regular feature of worship and yet is almost never interesting or engaging, I can only applaud such efforts."

We will continue our CEB experiment through this spring, hearing this translation for a while to get a sense of how it "plays" in Christian worship. I have not yet decided whether to keep it or revert to the NRSV (although I suspect it is the first translation ever that is giving the NRSV a run for the money), but I do know we will only be able to judge whether it is worth retaining through regular and weekly hearing of it rehearsed and heard and sung and shouted and whispered in public worship. The bible was written for such.

* You can follow tweets on the the CEB Blog tour at #CEBtour

** In this year of the gospel of Mark, there are two essays in the Juel volume on Mark (Juel focused his scholarship on this gospel) that are worth their weight in gold. Buy the book you won't be disappointed.

The White, Middle Class Captivity of our Denomination

2012-01-21T13:26:00.003-06:00

Two books I've read this week have changed me, permanently. Emily Dickinson said of poetry,

"If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?"

Much the same can be said of theology. So imagine me with the top of my head off right now.

I've always known that are our denomination was too white, and too middle class. There's something about Christian faith in the United States that seems to reinforce race categories rather than reduce them. This is a tragedy of immense proportions precisely because central to the gospel is the reconciliation of races and ethnicities.

Sports, businesses, schools, you name it, all of them are more racially integrated than the churches, especially mainline Protestant churches, of which general class our denomination is a member.

So I read with fear and trembling James Cone's new book, The Cross the Lynching Tree. Really if you read only one piece of theologically informed non-fiction this year, make it this one. Among other things, Cone draws our attention to the fact that no one, not one single theologian of note in the last century, has ever drawn a sustained comparison between the innocent suffering of those lynched in the United States, and the cross/lynching of Jesus Christ.

Even at the height of the lynching era, when liberal Protestant theologians could have and should have made it at least one part of their theologies of the cross, they did not. It was and remains a glaring oversight, and example of how wide the racial divisions are and continue to be.

I do not intend to point any fingers here. I live in a predominately white and middle class neighborhood, have served churches that include the same constituency, and went to schools that were also predominately filled with this race and class. I have failed on so many levels, the best I can do is simply note this issue and pray that the Spirit will change me, and change us as a church.

As a church, we keep lamenting that we are a shrinking denomination, and we think this is because we've lost our identity and missional impulse. But what if in fact we are shrinking because we are in captivity to white middle-classness?

Stephanie Spellers, in a short essay in another new book recently out (The Hyphenateds: How Emerging Christianity Is Re-Traditioning Mainline Practices) asks the very hard question, "Is the emerging church movement a white church movement?" She herself leads an Angli-mergent community in Boston, and is a black woman priest.

Here's the paragraph that took the top of my head off:

"Looking back, mainline churches can boast a historic commitment to social justice, reconciliation, and even antiracism, at times standing in the vanguard of cultural and social change. Those days of leading change have passed, and now we are scrambling to catch up. The irony is that, as I have interviewed and consulted with church leaders about the systemic decline of the mainline churches, many say we are suffering because we forgot who we are, chasing trends and watering down our traditions so much that there was nothing left for anyone to believe in or connect with. Research shows we've shrunk because we make up a mostly white, upper-middle-class church [Episcopalian, but Lutherans are close to this, if a little more solidly middle class], and that particular slice of America stopped growing at the very same time that other racial and cultural groups blossomed. The problem isn't that we let go of our identity. It's that we clung to it too tightly. As our neighborhoods changed, and hybridity became the rule, we came to look like cultural dinosaurs; suspicious of change, judgmental of emerging cultures, and incapable of venturing out to build relationships in the transformed cultures around us" (13).

Read that again three times and memorize it. It's one of the truest things I've ever read about us as mainline Protestants.

And the only way to bust out of captivity is to break the chains that bind us and leave our prison cells. Which means openness to change, loving engagement with emerging cultures, and venturing out to build relationships with people of other ethnic, racial, economic, and religious status.

Where is the top of your head now?

A Disseminary

2012-01-21T05:00:00.000-06:00

"What importance does the staggering éclat of Napster have for theological educators? It suggest the possibility of what one might call a “Disseminary,” a common effort to put as much theological sustenance at the disposal of as many people as possible. It suggests that a Disseminary can serve the mission of theological education by raising the tide of theological literacy among its students and among interested believers (and non-believers). A Disseminary sets out as rich a banquet of theological wisdom as it can manage to offer, without trying to set standards for who consumes it, how well, when, how often, or… anything.

A disseminary: a site that uses electronic technology to spread as much theological nourishment as possible, without devoting energy to policing the results of that distribution. No degrees. No requirements. No restrictions. Put it out where users can grab it. And get out of the way." (AKM Adam, Practicing the Disseminary: Technology Lessons from Napster)

This is an essay from the Napster era but even more incredibly applicable now than before. Given recent possible legislation on the free exchange of information, etc., theologians and churches need to decide how and whether to make resources free and available. Many on-line faith communities now function more and more like the disseminary he describes.

An Unusual Bibliography

2012-01-20T11:36:00.002-06:00

The following books all sit on my desk at close hand as I plod along on the dissertation, and I wonder if anyone else in the whole of North America has this particular constellation of books at hand to do their work... If you are looking for something to read in 2012, you could do a lot worse than pretty much anything listed here.

Bibliography

Blascovich, Jim and Jeremy Bailenson. Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New

Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.

Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA:

The MIT Press, 2010.

Borgmann, Albert. Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology. Grand

Rapids, MI: Brazos Press. 2003.

Boyd, Danah. Taken Out of Context. PhD diss., University of California Berkeley, 2008.

Brock, Brian. Christian Ethics in a Technological Age. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,

2010.

Bruns, Axel. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage.

New York: Peter Lang, 2008

Burgess, Jean and Joshua Green. Youtube: Online Video and Participatory Culture.

Cambridge: Polity. 2009.

Campbell, Heidi. Exploring Religious Community Online: We Are One in the Network.

New York: Peter Lang. 2005.

Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. New York:

W. W. Norton. 2008.

Crouch, Andy. Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. Downer’s Grove, IL:

InterVarsity Press, 2008.

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