Steve Lansingh's blog

Reimagining church: a conversation, part six

2010-03-15T23:14:00.000-07:00

SIDE-TANGENT: "Christian Education"

I had forgotten that while Frank Viola titles one of his chapters "Christian Education," what that chapter is really about is the deficiencies of the seminary system in particular, which uses a classroom model rather than an apprenticeship model to shape leaders (and how that seeps into the church services with a more knowledge-based approach than familial approach in terms of how we do Sunday School, study the Bible, and elevate the sermon on Sunday as a centerpiece).

So, not refreshing myself with the book first, I started writing about the idea of Christian Education in general, including my experience at Christian schools growing up and a Christian liberal arts college. Viola isn't against this at all (and neither am I, although there are definitely some of the same dangers to watch out for: a tendency to see Christianity first as a construct and second as an experiential community, to slight those who are less educated, and overlooking the need for personal mentorship in additional to processing information). Viola obviously believes that we should become more informed, be more curious about, and be more well-read regarding our faith and our history and our God — he is churning out nearly a book a year, after all, for exactly this purpose.

But rather than erase everything I wrote an focus more on the issue at hand, I'll publish this tangental post separately and then move on to the history of seminary:

For most of my life, the cerebral was the primary way in which I grew deeper with God. I'm a big fan of Christian education as opposed to, say, Christian ignorance or Christian incuriosity. I'm extremely grateful that I had the chance to attend Wheaton College, to take Bible and theology classes and have my mind opened up to a fuller understanding of the contexts of the Old and New Testaments. I'm doubly grateful that I was able to take classes on a host of other subjects that asked 'where does God show up in this realm of life?' It made connecting with God much less about Sundays and much more about life. I'm grateful that I've been introduced through friends to the works of Frederick Beuchner, Henri Nouwen, N.T. Wright, Kathleen Norris, Sundar Singh, Thomas Cahill, Brian McLaren, and Shane Claiborne, to name just a few of dozens. I love reading; I love discovery; I love learning something about God that I never knew or having an old impression corrected so that I can better understand and grow toward his heart. I'm all for Christian education; I'm all for Christian higher education; I'm all for people taking the initiative to engage the vast resources of Christian theology and scholarship and experience to work out their role and life in the body of Christ.

And yet — I know my weaknesses. I have a weakness for elevating my conception of an idea above the actual living out of the idea. I have a weakness for pride. I have a weakness for being so consumed with my own sense of personally growing closer to God through learning that I rest on my knowledge and don't embody him to others. It hit me in my last year of college that although I had transformed significantly in my beliefs and my thinking and knowledge of the faith, I severely lacked in one thing: love.

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing." (1 Cor 13:1-3)

If anything, my self-inflating absorption of new knowledge made me think more of myself than I did my fellow man. I was content to pontificate about life instead of entering into it. That's a pattern I have to watch out for to this very day, often slipping back into old habits.

For a long time what I wanted to do with my life was to write inspirational and challenging Christian books. I loved to read books that talked about the love of Christ in such a way that the reader was moved to live out that love, and I thought that my role in the Church could be of writing to spur others on. It's just that over time, the more I wrote, the more I felt like I had skipped a step. I hadn't actually been spurred to love, just to write and to think. I didn't know how to interact with people with compassion, by listening, to take on their burdens; I only knew how to inform and to critique. Yes, the body of Christ has many parts, and it is the part of some of them to write and inspire, but it is the role of all of us to love.

Love is something so simple that a child can do it purely, and yet the hurdles we put in our way to expressing it as adult sometimes requires surrendering every ounce of our mind, body, heart, and spirit to Christ. Knowledge can help unstick us to be sure. It can also be a trap. The answer isn't necessarily abandoning the the books and just serving at church and giving away money and sacrificing my time, but about doing all of Christian living out of the right spirit, whether it is learning and investigating or serving and celebrating and knowing people.

I really think that true Christian love has to be learned on the job. You learn it by being open to new friendships. You learn it by failing at them. You learn it amid the muck and messiness and friction of community. You learn it when the bloodless knowledge about the theology of forgiveness comes slam-bang into contact with the painfulness of actually needing forgiveness from another. You learn it be receiving love from the people of Christ in ways and from people who you would never have expected. You learn it by by being encouraged by a cadre of Christian friends with whom you try to cultivate a spirit of love together as a group. You learn it by becoming less and less scared about maintaining a perfection and being untainted by difficulties, and more accepting of your own readiness to make mistakes in new situations and with new people you don't understand. You learn it by having the Holy Spirit speak words through you that you were not prepared to say. You learn it by praying over someone, even as your introverted heart is pounding. You learn it by walking the rope without a net. I am absolutely still learning this on a fundamental level.

I've received an incredibly ministerial training within my church. I learned through a lot of trial and error, seeking and exploration, mentoring and being mentored — I would barely recognize the person I've become now if I had met myself straight out of college. I learned by doing, by participating, by jumping in, by being buoyed by community, by conversation, by gleaning. Yet I am still unqualified to do anything of any relevance or impact; without a degree I feel stuck in a ghetto of inconsequence.

The house church model says that each person is free to grow as far as their gifts take them. Maybe that's why I've ended up here. Maybe that's why I am feeling fulfilled here, even in our infancy stages. No one is stiff-arming me and keeping me away from a full use of what God has developed in me; there are no divisions between first-stringers, bench-warmers, practice squads, cheerleaders and spectators. Everyone gets to play, and play hard.

(Next up: seminary...)

Bacon-pineapple noodles

2010-03-14T13:20:00.000-07:00

I improv-ed (that would be improvised, not improved, although, maybe it is a bit improved) a dish last night in attempting to feed six people and thought I'd share. For some reason when cooking for a large group I never take a normal recipe and double or triple it, but just add more ingredients to fill out a dish I normally make. Weird, I know.

One of my long-time favorites to make for guests is Bacon-Pineapple Fried Rice, which is essentially 1 box Rice-a-Roni fried rice, 1 can pineapple slices, a 12 oz. package bacon, 1 large sweet onion, and sprinkling of sunflower seeds. (It probably goes without saying, but you chop the pineapple coarsely, dice and cook the onion, and cook and break up the bacon before mixing all together.) I almost feel the need to put fried rice in quotes because Rice-a-Roni fried rice is barely rice, and tastes nothing like actual fried rice in any way. I just really like the flavorings in it.

At any rate, I was making my second dish of the evening with rice, and, not wanting to be monotonous, decided to substitute ramen noodles for the mostly-pasta-anyway Rice-a-Roni. Then, to make it somewhat more heathful as a main meal, added carrots, red pepper, and water chestnuts (and substituted almonds for sunflower seeds because that's what was accessible). The result was something that should have tasted mostly the same but instead was a completely different meal. I like both of them, and can't pick a favorite (and both get packed away by guests with equal gusto). Not that I have to choose just one!

Since I have the photo from last night, here's the full details of this particular recipe. You'll need:

6 packages ramen noodles (only 2 ramen flavoring packets, beef)
flavoring packet from Rice-o-Roni's fried rice
1 can pineapple slices, chopped
12 oz. package bacon, chopped and separated
1 large sweet onion, diced
3 oz. or so raw almonds, chopped
1 can sliced water chestnuts, chopped
1 large red pepper, diced
2 large carrots, peeled and chunked

1. Put pineapple, almonds, and water chestnuts into large pot.

2. Cook the carrots. (I was steaming other things in my dual-level steamer and used that for 15 minutes or so.) Add to large pot.

3. Saute the onion and red pepper and add to pot.

4. Cook the bacon and set aside. (You can cook individual slices and crumble, or chop it up beforehand and cook it in two batches, which is faster.)

5. Cook ramen with two cups of water to every three packages noodles. (I did this in two batches, one with the beef flavoring and one with the fried rice flavoring, and had to break up the noodle blocks a little to get more of them touching the water.)

6. Mix vegetables, noodles and bacon together over low-medium heat and then serve!

Note: You might find a better method of cooking all the ingredients more simultaneously... I'm terrible at juggling a lot of things at once and with a dish like this end up cooking all the ingredients just slightly underdone and then completing the cooking in the final warm-up.

Second note: Yes, this leaves you with a box of plain Rice-o-Roni and extra beef flavoring packets. I'll have to let you know if that turns out as an edible side-dish another time.

My turn to do it!

2010-03-12T23:50:00.000-08:00

Corin reads "Big Dog ... Little Dog" for himself.

Everyone's a critic

2010-03-11T16:13:00.000-08:00

Recently Corin's been telling us what to do at every opportunity.

As we drove to the store today, Corin requested "more music." All of the radio presets had commercials airing except the classical station — we listened to it for 30 seconds or so before Corin said emphatically, "Apa, I can't do this."

(Sometimes he says things out of the blue, so I confirmed with him: "You mean the music?" "Yes.")

Later I caught him headbanging to "Rockin' like a Hurricane."

[Edit: For the record, just in case it still sounds like a coincidental phrase, what he usually says during a slow song or anything without a strong bassline is "different music!" This one was just so much funnier I had to archive it.]

Super Why

2010-03-10T10:51:00.000-08:00

Corin's new favorite TV show is a PBS series called "Super Why." It has a theme song, but Corin made up his own, which he sings everywhere he goes:

Super Why,
Super Why,
Super Why,
Oh, Super Why,
Super Why,
Super Why,
Super Why,
Super Why — oh!
Super Why,
Super Why — oh!
Super Why,
Super Why — oh!
Super Why,
Super Why,
Super Why — oh!

Sing Super Why,
Super Why,
Super Why,
Super Why,
Super Why,
Super Why,
Super Why,
Super Why — oh!

Reimagining church: a conversation, part five

2010-03-05T13:55:00.000-08:00

TITHING & CHURCH BUDGETS

To the best of my recollection, I've never attended a church that heavily pushed tithing as a Christian concept. Certainly we were encouraged to give to the church, and to give joyfully, and the 10% benchmark was often tossed around as a generally good guideline (some of the churches talked about 10% being kind of a baseline and one's generosity was supposed to exceed that, while some I think were happy just to have people aiming for 10%). On top of that, I didn't have an allowance growing up (although we did get a nickel to put in the offering plate if we were ready for church on time, which normally might not have been an incentive but since it was God's nickel on the line it usually worked to get me ready), so I kind of tuned out those discussions, and my paychecks in college were so slim that tithing out of them was pretty easy, because ten percent of virtually nothing was like the price of a hamburger. It wasn't really until after college graduation when I was finally making a regular wage and had real expenses and actually had to figure out how to budget life that it became more of a question and issue.

When I was working on writing a series of books with a church planter ten years ago, his big emphasis about giving was finding ways for people to gift to the church with an actual, tangible item rather than with a check. A check is so reflexively easy in many ways, and usually transfers the burden onto someone else to do the actual gifting or outreach or loving with the money. He saw it as more relational, and so encouraged churches to post their budget and expenses online and have people choose something they want to gift the church with, like a wedding registry. Obviously some of those things are going to require checks such as utilities, heat, and light. But other expenses people could physically go out and buy the toner or craft supplies or office equipment or even transportation or signage. The difference would be like that of five families getting together and each writing a $40 check to a caterer to come in and make them dinner versus each family bringing their own food to share. You're not just giving, you're contributing.

The church I've been a part of most recently placed a big emphasis on giving not just to the church, but to God's work in other parts of the world and in outreach to one's neighborhood. I think that's been a good mindset and habit to cultivate. Our small group does a project (or series of projects in the neighborhood) with $200, and let me tell you, it's much easier to write a check for $200 than it is to identify needs, coordinate schedules, volunteer time and effort along with the money, and to know where the money is tangibly going — but it does so much more, more for the people who feel noticed and taken care of, more for the people investing in others. That's what the church needs to give anyway: relationship, care, love, time, investment, not just money.

That said, giving is hardly my strength. It doesn't come naturally to me. I always have to weigh how much my prompting to give comes out of joyfulness versus guilt, and wrestle too with how much it matters (i.e. would giving more often lead to a more joyful spirit over time as I got more practice?). Essentially, my reluctance to write a check because of its ease pushes me to want to donate in more tangible and thought-through ways, but, because they're harder to decide on and follow through with, I give less overall than I could.

With our house church, since it has no expenses, we are making up plans to do some larger-scale investments in our community and in relationship than I've ever attempted before because we are looking to put up some serious cash (that might otherwise go to building and salaries). Well, not really serious cash — it's normal donation cash that is no longer a number on a page but a long long receipt and a whole bunch of physical goods, which makes it seem more enormous. It's pretty exciting, and it's pretty daunting. I've been a Christian all my life and I've never even considered before creatively engaging a project in the community worth more than $200. Seems a little sad. And yet I understand why — there's a learning curve to spearheading something big; there are certainly people more qualified than me at planning and follow-through and who have connections that maybe gets the price down, making the larger church service project more efficient. But as the church are we supposed to be efficient? Are we supposed to give in to the division of labor where you can safely ignore loving acts of service because someone else has got it covered? I think we're supposed to participate in everything Christ has asked us to do, to live a whole and complete Christian experience. Even if it's scary to attempt.

"Pagan Christianity?" contains a lot of new information I didn't know about the practice of tithing, perhaps because I had never studied it particularly. The one that sticks out the most is that the Judaic practice of tithing (since it was a part of the old law, Jesus does not promote tithing, nor is it a concept mentioned in any description of the early church) was actually a 23.3% tax, not a 10% one. God instituted three different types of tithing, two every year and one every third year, for a total of 23.3% per year:

"A tithe of the produce of the land to support the Levites who had no inheritance in Canaan.
A tithe of the produce of the land to sponsor religious festivals in Jerusalem. If the produce was too burdensome for a family to carry to Jerusalem, they could convert it into money.
A tithe of the produce of the land collected every third year for the local Levites, orphans, strangers, and widows."

In addition, it's worth noting that the tithe was not on income, but rather on the produce of the land, "which included the seed of the land, the fruit of the land, and the herd or the flock." It was ten percent of the raw materials produced; I'm not even sure what the modern equivalent would be given that companies own most materials and people usually contribute labor. A further point to note is the tithe did not go to their local place of worship, but was the taxation system for a country that had no other taxes. "Israel was obligated to support their national workers (priests), their holidays (festivals), and their poor (strangers, widows, and orphans)." So simply taking the word "tithe" (tenth) out of the Old Testament and slapping it into today's context is just as inapplicable as it is unbiblical.

(Funny side note: Viola counters the argument given that Abraham, before the Law, tithed to the high priest Melchizedek out of the spoils of a battle he had fought, so the principle of tithing must exist outside of the Law. "This is the only recorded time that Abraham tithed out of his 175 years of life. ... If you wish to use Abraham as a 'proof text' to argue that Christians must tithe, then you are only obligated to tithe one time!")

Malachi 3 contains some pretty stern words from God for the people of Israel, who were withholding tithes at the time, and that chapter is often used to prove that failing to tithe is an affront to God. But in the same passage, "the Lord says that He will judge those who oppress the widow, the fatherless, and the stranger." God is upset on behalf of the people who will go hungry without the tithe offering. "Herein is the heart of Malachi 3:8-10: He opposes oppression of the poor." So the point of the tithe is defending the powerless, feeding the hungry, and caring for the excluded. That's the measure of a 'tithing spirit' rather than a number on a check. Its a much harder and more difficult standard to live up to, just as with all of the Old Testament law that Jesus replaced with the law of love. "Giving in the early church was voluntary and those who benefited from it were the poor, orphans, widows, sick, prisoners, and strangers. ... We see first-century saints giving cheerfully according to their ability."

So how did the practice of church tithing take root? Although a select few Christian leaders floated the idea of tithing to support the clergy in the fourth century (who were at the time state-sponsored), the practice did not in fact take root until the eighth century. "In the seventh and eighth centuries, leasing land was a familiar characteristic of the European economy. The use of the tithe, or the tenth, was commonly used to calculate payments to landlords. As the church increased its ownership of land across Europe," they began to lease land at the standard ten percent like anyone else, but the ecclesiastical landlords used the old religious connotations of the tithe to add extra incentive for lessees to honor the arrangement. "By the end of the tenth century, the tithe as a rent charge for leasing land had all but faded. The tithe, however, remained, and it came to be viewed as a moral requirement, [and] evolved into a legally mandatory religious practice throughout Christian Europe ... enforced by the secular authorities." These days, the tithe is no longer mandatory in any country, but the priority of the building fund and clergy salaries are nearly always at the top of the list of where the money goes, taking 50 to 85% of the church budget in most American churches. The poor and needy take a much smaller sliver.

Viola's beef with a clergy salary extends from his chapter against the professional pastor, which I haven't covered yet, but at the risk of spilling the beans it's worth noting that: The only individuals within the first-century church who were provided for financially were the apostles, who were basically itinerant missionary church-planters, and Paul, one of them, decided to refuse to take that payment even though it was his right. The concept of the pastor didn't even exist, but the local leadership that the churches had, elders (shepherds), were not salaried. Since every member of the church was participatory and they shared doing the ministering for and with one another, there was no reason to pay a person for doing more of a share than anyone else. "If all Christians got in touch with the call that lies upon them to be functioning priests in the Lord's house (and they were permitted to exercise that call), the question would immediately arise: 'What on earth are we paying a pastor for?' ... Giving a salary to pastors elevates them above the rest of God's people [and] the rest of the church lapses into a state of passive dependence.

"But that is not all. Paying a pastor encourages him to be a man pleaser. ... He is not able to speak freely without the fear that he may lose some heavy tithers. ... [Also] it produces clergy who feel 'stuck' in the pastorate because they believe they lack employable skills." The burden of putting all the roles of the church on one person, who, because he or she is paid for them, has no option to delegate or empower tasks to others, creates a system where many pastors are overburdened, end up neglecting their families, suffer from depression, and have to put a happy face on it all. "Unfortunately, most of us are deeply naive about the overwhelming power of the religious system. It is a faceless system that does not tire of chewing up and spitting out its own."

Knocking down tithing a peg is an attractive thing to do, given how often people feel pressured from the church to give. It gets us off the hook mentally: I can give only what I want now! True, technically, but the first century church was marked by such overwhelming generosity that the philosopher Galen observed the church with wonder and wrote: "Behold how to they love one another." It was quite likely they gave more than ten percent of what they had, but it was given specifically, in love, in community, and they were excited to do it.

(next up: Christian education...)

Reimagining church: a conversation, part four

2010-03-04T15:20:00.000-08:00

THE CHURCH BUILDING

I've been told from a very young age that the people of God are the church (ekklesia), not the building we meet in. We all know that. But I've heard it often enough and through enough stages of my life to wonder: Why do we keep needing to be told that? And what are we prepared to do about it? If we were really being the church, would we need to be told that? What is it about the church building that leads us to think of God as somehow manifesting himself more in that location rather than in his people? Is it safer to think of God as separate from us, to be visited, to be kept pristine in a 'holy' place rather than in our impure and imperfect hearts?

When I graduated college and started looking for my first church home as an adult, Amanda and I visited a lot of church buildings but felt at home at the only place we visited that wasn't in a church building, a fairly young church plant that met in an elementary school lunchroom. It was tied, in a lot of ways, to clothing thing: I wanted to believe and did believe that God was present everywhere, and the lack of refinement in those lunchroom gatherings just served to reinforce that truth. God felt more present to me in the absence of any architectural trappings than he ever had in the nicely styled church buildings. It was a bit like growing your own food: It's a lot more work, it doesn't look as nice as the store-bought stuff, but it was completely thought through, invested in, and enjoyed. Putting the work in yields otherwise elusive results. This felt right to me.

Then the church plant got big enough start looking at its own property and its own building fund. The messages started changing. More and more often there was a guilt-induced plea for money. There were new sermon series on stewardship. Bulletins and newsletters featured those temperature-gauge graphics showing how much we'd raised and how much more we needed. But no one ever bothered to explain why we needed a building. (To be fair, this was Indiana, land of perpetual construction, where every house was comically large, where square footage and breathing air went hand in hand.) There were no presentations like: "We really think it will help us to extend love to our neighbors better if we have these facilities and here's our plan for integrating our community," or "We're going to replace the camaraderie we all feel pitching in to put away the folding chairs and loading up the trucks with some other form of togetherness in which we all feel needed, and here's how." There were no arguments given, no convincing attempted, no purposes given to rally around and contribute to — at least nothing beyond that we'd finally be grown up as a church and that everything would be so much easier. I don't mean to pick on my old church in particular, but it seems representative of an ethos: the church building seems to make things more easy, more settled, more secure, more established, more prestigious — none of which seem to me to be Christian values.

Who says: I want life to be harder? I want to struggle more? To do more grunt work? To have things feel up in the air? To be at the whims of others' beneficence? To beg? To put in longer hours? To live in tenuous limbo? No one would ask for these things, and yet these things are often the very heart of what pushes us to dependence on God. When your own power isn't enough, you turn to God. When you are weary and tired, you turn to God. When the future is uncertain, you turn to God. Is it possible that a church building turns us away from God rather than draws us toward him, despite all intention to the contrary?

The next young church I was a part of had a really interesting approach to a church building, one that I would uphold as a real model of what's possible: rather than just renting a facility for Sundays, they rented a facility as a whole, turned it into a coffee shop, senior-resource center, and arts venue, and then did worship and meetings there with folding chairs. (The folding chairs were actually great for the several times the pastor would stop the sermon, let us turn toward one another in circles, and share a word of encouragement or a story about God in our lives with each other. That's much harder to do with pews.) The focus of our communal building wasn't all about us us us, but about being a good neighbor, a member of the community first and foremost. I think that's a model that makes sense. I am sure there are others equally viable, taking a different tack based on their surroundings and neighborhood. I'm not against buildings per se for the Christian community. I can't imagine a world without any buildings owned by Christian people, whether congregationally or through Christian non-profits, that did not make available to large numbers of Christians the chance to gather together at times, to be of benefit to the neighborhood in the explicit name of the loving Christ, and to ensure a legacy to future generations that they will not be squeezed out of dense areas — essentially setting forth an example of what a redeemed space in this world might look like and pointing to the hope we have that God will someday redeem all of matter and space and time to his purposes. (On of the best examples of using space wisely are my friends Rob & Kirsten, who, instead of buying a house, bought a store with an apartment overhead, and they use that store to employ people in town, sell fair-trade products from around the world, host film festivals, and so forth.) I just question how well we usually use our buildings for the purposes of true ekklesia and of loving our neighbors, and to what degree we let our buildings impede that.

I fear that Christians, me included, get trapped too often inside their our bubble. When we put a big cross on top of a building we think that's an invitational gesture, that it means "Come on in, Jesus is here!" (And don't even get me started on pithy church-sign sayings, which have been doing some of the most violent torturings of Scripture for as long as they've been around.) But if you've ever driven around and passed a mosque or synagogue with their equally distinctive architectures, your first reaction is probably not: Wow, I should really go in there even though I know nothing of their religion! These admittedly beautiful buildings are more intimidating than invitational. So it is with our buildings. We see their beauty and size and think it speaks of the gloriousness and power and strength of God, but others driving by just see, maybe, a cold monument. Outside of the context of the community inside, it doesn't make sense. The buildings certainly say nothing about the humility of God, the lowering of himself to be among us, the unnecessariness of jumping over barriers in order to meet him.

But now I'm drifting off into theory and ideas, whereas the idea was to share my story and experience. Here's the low-down: I feel uncomfortable in traditional church buildings the way I would in dress clothes. It feels like too much the facade. Seeing as my most meaningful spiritual moments have been in conversation and in action rather than in passive listening, I dislike the set-up of the sanctuary that is all pointed in one direction, lecture-hall style. I am uncomfortable with how much a church building can cost, and what it says about our priorities as far as loving the world versus making ourselves comfortable. I've done a fair share of church visitations over the years and can say that, even as a believer, there is a trepidation in stepping into an unfamiliar church building; they are not particularly invitational.

At the same time, I've found that a unified and corporate church body pooling their resources toward a particular ministerial goal of entering into community and loving our neighbors can accomplish more wide-reaching and more lasting than just a few people on their own can do. There is power in large-scale collaboration. (Perhaps I differ with the house-church philosophy in this way; perhaps not — I'm still in the early stages of learning its values in full.) In addition, there are a few physical spaces in their world that have been meaningful places of prayer for me (now torn down, sadly) that I would have loved to return to, because layer upon layer of talking with God were laid out there. Just because God is available in any time and place doesn't mean that it's always easy to remember that, and a meaningful physical space can help cut through some of the tentativeness. (I'm not sure if you can purposefully construct that in a way that works for everyone — as I said, many spaces turn me off rather than speak to me, but maybe having a myriad of options out there is good for precisely that reason.)

What I'm saying is that I'm OK with buildings. I like sanctuary. I like the bustle of life. I like community projects. I like intergenerational touchstones. I like art, and venues for art. I particularly like businesses in buildings that both help pay the rent and give the community an easy in. What I don't like is the assumption that a church building legitimizes a church body, the assumption that the Sunday church service is where real 'church' happens, the pointing of all seats toward one speaker, the pleas for money disproportionate to pleas to give away money to the needs of people who God has placed right in front of your particular path, as well as what it implies about our attitude toward God that we feel we need to build a temple to him. To use another odd metaphor, church buildings are like alcohol: they can serve a good purpose, a communal and celebratory purpose, but they can also be intoxicating, and hard to quit.

OK, enough of me reiterating myself. What does Viola have to say, and what does history have to say?

"The third-century Christian apologist Minucius Felix wrote, 'We have no temples and no altars.' ... Although surrounded by Jewish synagogues and pagan temples, the early Christians were the only religious people on earth who did not erect sacred buildings for their worship. The Christian faith was born in homes, out in courtyards, and along roadsides.

"It should be noted that on occasion, the Christians used already existing buildings for special and temporary purposes. Solomon's porch and the school of Tyrannus are examples (Acts 5:12, 19:9). Their normal church meetings, however, were always set in a private home. ...

"As Christian congregations grew in size, they began to remodel their homes to accommodate their growing numbers. One of the most outstanding finds of archaeology is the house of Dura-Europos in modern Syria. ... [It] was essentially a house with a wall torn out between two bedrooms to create a large living room. With his modification, the house could accommodate about seventy people. Remodeled houses like Dura-Europos cannot rightfully be called 'church buildings.' They were simply homes that had been refurbished to accommodate larger assemblies."

The key point here is that no buildings were specifically set aside for religious observation. This seems to be intentional, in the same ways as the early Christians had no shrines, statues, sacrifices, public festivals, dances, or pilgrimages. "Their central ritual involved a meal that had a domestic origin," writes Frank Senn in "Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical." "This indicates that the bareness of early Christian worship should not be taken as a sign of primitiveness but rather as a way of emphasizing the spiritual character of Christian worship." As the communities grew, people needed to be accommodated, but through a combination of remodeling existing resources, using open public spaces, renting out large gathering arenas, and buying and converting elements of third-century insulae (islands) — multi-storied blocks containing shops and housing — to connect meeting spaces in proximity to one another, the early Christians were able to tackle the issue of growing size while keeping the intimacy of community and the centrality of the feast.

OK, I'm getting way too much into minutia; let me sum up as quickly as I can the rest of the chapter: The emperor Constantine converts to Christianity (while never abandoning his sun-worship, as polytheism was quite common at the time), and he raises the Christians from a minority status to "legitimacy" and orders a whole slew of sacred buildings built for the Christians to cement their new status in the world. Constantine's buildings "were patterned exactly after the model of the basilica. These were the common government buildings, designed after Greek pagan temples. ... They were wonderful for seating passive and docile crowds to watch a performance. ... Basilicas were designed so that the sun fell upon the speaker as he faced the congregation. ... The hierarchical distinction embedded in the basilican architecture was unmistakable. ... Because the church building was [now] regarded as sacred, congregants had to undergo a purification ritual before entering [and] fountains were erected in the courtyard."

Furthermore, Constantine's favorable patronage of the church resulted in "the pomp and ritual of the imperial court [being] incorporated into the Christian liturgy." It was common for Roman emperors to appear in public with lights carried before them and a basin of fire with spices, so candles and the burning of incense were added to the services as clergy entered the room. "Worship became more professional, dramatic, and ceremonial ... [since] the Roman custom of beginning a service with processional music was adopted." We've already seen how the clergy at this point began to wear special garments to denote themselves. "The upshot of it all was that there was a loss of intimacy and open participation. The professional clergy performed acts of worship while the laity looked on as spectators."

Summing up even faster: Viola follows the evolution of church architecture through the ages, from Byzantine to Romanesque to Gothic, with its additions of flying buttresses and stained glass, the Protestant church building, which replaced the centrality of the altar table with the centrality of the pulpit, the addition of steeples and spires, the invention of pews and the balcony, and a survey of variations on the form in contemporary churches, all of which have origins from pagan cultures that were adopted at the time they were fashionable and then were held onto and became 'Christianly traditional' by the passage of time. "Yet despite these variations, all Protestant architecture produces the same sterile effects that were present in the Constantinian basilicas. They continue to maintain the unbiblical division between clergy and laity. The arrangement and mood of the building conditions the congregation toward passivity.

"There does not exist a shred of biblical support for the church building," Viola reminds us. "The building is an architectural denial of the priesthood of all believers [and] impedes our understanding and experience that the church is Christ's functioning body that lives and breathes under his headship. ... Somehow we have been taught to feel holier when we are in the 'house of God' and have inherited a dependency upon an edifice."

(next up: tithing and church funds...)

Reimagining church: a conversation, part three

2010-03-04T11:07:00.000-08:00

I thought of one more piece of introduction I should say before I move onto the book (which is coming, I promise), and that is that the opening statement of this series is slightly inaccurate. While it's true that we are starting a house church/simple church that's in its infancy, we are also checking out a more traditional church plant that's also in its infancy, one that shares a lot of the same ideals that I'm expressing in this series. In particular, Pastor Leah has been stressing how much each of us involved is a pastor in the church, even going so far as to say we should get t-shirts printed up that say the name of the church on the front and the word "pastor" on the back. We are each to be ministers not only to one another, but in the world; our mission is not to point people in direction of a real, paid, pastor but to be fully qualified ambassadors of Jesus Christ. I feel at ease with a lot of the things that they want to do and want to be. And since the church plant meets in a house, does not have a paid staff or funding, or has much yet in the way of an order of worship or a sermon-centric service, in its current incarnation it looks a lot like what I value. I haven't been involved in enough early-on church plants to know if this is how they all begin, very empowering and open-sharing centered, but then move more toward formality and tradition as they get bigger, or if this particular one might have a chance of keeping a lot of the feeling of a house church as it gets bigger. I don't know if that is even possible.

I've also been leading another group almost two years that isn't quite a house church, but it's a church-independent small group meeting, centered on tangibly expressing and revealing Christ in everyday life, called Christlikeness Groups for short. It also holds to a lot of the values I'm expressing here, even though our intention in meeting together isn't to do church but to do open sharing and every-member participation in revealing how God is alive and working in our lives. All of which is to say that this series is less about a little fling of an idea about starting a house church from a couple months back, but about the culmination of my spiritual life and growth within the church that is leading me toward different and new expressions (well, different and new to me ... actually quite old). I'm not ready to pin down exactly one right way to do church (and I hope I never come to that point because then I'll really be unbearable), but somehow I want to fold a lot of these key principles I'm wrestling with into whatever expression of church comes out of this tumultuous season of life. What I want to do here is not to saber-rattle but just to be honest about all the questions I've had about church over the years.

That said, ... drum roll, please ... onto the book!

DRESS CLOTHES

The very first traditional church practice that I called into question was dressing up for church. Now, I was never (and still am not) the cool kid, the trend-setter, the one who couldn't be caught dead in something stodgy. Stodgy actually served me quite well growing up, attending Christian schools and adhering to the dress code. None of us were particularly fashionable in our corduroys and polos, and it took an element of adolescent rivalry out of the equation a bit. In some ways, wearing the same nice clothes for church on Sunday should have just been another day of not being judged for my fashion or lack thereof — but I felt much less myself in my attire on Sundays than any other time. It mattered to me because I would hear things at church like "Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart," and "Come just as you are to worship," and "You don't have to clean yourself up before you come into the presence of God because you actually can't clean yourself up outside of God's presence." The messages I was hearing were all about being real before God, about how appearances were a false front, but then our practices contradicted those. I was fine with dressing nicely to represent my school, but if God was the God who they said he was, then it seemed like one could and should wear whatever one was comfortable with when meeting together in his name.

Of the nine chapters in the book, this one is the shortest because much has already happened to relax the dress code in many American churches, especially in seeker-sensitive congregations where churches don't want to put up any unnecessary barriers to visitors, and in a lot of younger congregations or emergent churches where emphasis is placed on bringing your whole and authentic self. While the majority of churches in America still wear their Sunday best, there are enough variations that most people can find a church in their area that doesn't require it, and it's not nearly as culturally controversial anymore.

This is also the church practice with the least deep roots into history, perhaps explaining its first-to-go status in present-day churches.

"The practice of dressing up for church is a relatively recent phenomenon. It began in the late eighteenth century with the Industrial Revolution, and it became widespread in the mid-nineteenth century. Before this time ... only the the well-to-do aristocrats of society could afford nice clothing. Common folks had only two sets of clothes, work clothes for laboring in the field and less tattered clothing for going into town. ... This changed with the invention of mass textile manufacturing ... . The middle class was born, and ... to demonstrate their newly improved status, they could now 'dress up' for social events just like the well-to-do."

Denominations like the early Methodists and early Baptists resisted the trend, speaking out against fine clothing, "teaching that it separated the rich from the poor," and even going so far as to turn away from their meetings those who wore expensive clothing. But "in 1843, Horace Bushnell, an influential Congregational minister in Connecticut, published an essay ... argu[ing] that sophistication and refinement were attributes of God and that Christians should emulate them," swinging the pendulum firmly in favor of formal dress not just as a temporary cultural phenomenon but as a now spiritualized practice.

The two main theological points Viola is concerned about here are these: "First, it reflects the false division between the secular and the sacred. To think that God cares one whit if you wear dressy threads on Sunday to 'meet Him' is a violation of the New Covenant. We have access to God's presence at all times and in all circumstances."

His second concern comes from the formal clergy attire, which pre-dates the Industrial Revolution and stretches back to the secular dress of the fourth-century Greco-Roman world. Clement of Alexandria was the first to argue that "the clergy should wear better garments than the laity. Clement said that the minister's clothes should be 'simple' and 'white.' ... This custom appears to have been borrowed from the pagan philosopher Plato, who wrote that 'white was the color of the gods.' In this regard, both Clement and Tertullian felt that dyed colors were displeasing to the Lord."

Viola continues to trace the changes in clergy dress through the centuries, moving to purple colors, then adding ornate and costly decorative splashes, and then their development as sacred objects. Clergy later began to wear distinctive clothing on the street, outside of the church buildings, to continue their separation into everyday life. The Reformers scoffed at priestly vestments but in their place adopted the scholar's black gown, wearing it both in and out of the church buildings. As Protestants splintered into denominations, different groups retained different levels of formal dress for their pastoral leaders, but in all but the rarest cases, the pastor today is expected to dress at least as well as the best-dressed member of the congregation, and often retains specific cloaks or vestments for performing baptism and/or the Lord's Supper.

Personally, this has never bothered me much, or I'd never really thought about it, since my own church experiences have been with very non-flashy clergy. But Viola's point here is that a) special clothing for clergy is one additional element that fosters the separation of "God's people into two classes: 'professional' and 'nonprofessional.'" (There's a whole chapter on that issue in particular, which we will get to, but little things like distinctive dress are part of the overall picture by reinforcing the division in unspoken and often unexamined terms, he says.) And b) "The Lord Jesus and His disciples knew nothing of wearing special clothing to impress God or to distinguish themselves from God's people. Wearing special garb for religious purposes was rather a characteristic of the Scribes and Pharisees." Jesus specifically comment on their dress, and not in glowing terms: "Beware the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted in the marketplaces ..." (Luke 20:46).

(next up: the church building...)

Reimagining church: a conversation, part two

2010-03-02T11:55:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me as I write this series that I will probably end up stepping on the toes of most people I know to some degree or another, because virtually no one I know is actually in the house church movement. All of my friends have their own particular qualms with their churches, but there hasn't been an en masse exodus to meet in homes. Actually, I've known quite a few friends who have left the churches I've been a part of, probably because the main two were both young church plants that we joined semi-early, when a lot of stuff wasn't set in stone, and the churches grew in different directions than some of these folks wanted. But none of them (that I know of) chose a house church as an option to move to. They have either moved onto newer church plants, or somewhere with a ministry they were looking for, or somewhere with more emphasis on community, but still within an established church. To be honest, I don't even know at this stage that the house church is for me either — we've only had a couple of meetings so far.

I guess what's surprised me is how deeply house churches seem to be under the radar. It's like living your whole life telling people that you don't much care for strawberries, but you really like marshmallows and nuts, and nobody comes right out and says to you: Then why are you eating neapolitan ice cream instead of rocky road? There's a whole flavor out there that I somehow didn't know about. I practically had to invent it from scratch before finding out it already existed out there. I'm mostly writing this series just in case there's a friend or reader out there who resonates with some of the ways I've felt, and experiences I've had, but doesn't know what to do with them. Shrugging your shoulders and trying to fit in isn't the only option; look into house churches and see if that feels like an answer.

OK, now onto the book. While most of "Pagan Christianity?" is spent questioning our underlying assumptions about the historical genesis of common church practices, and the follow-up, "Reimagining Church" is more about rebuilding from there, it's nevertheless helpful to state up front, from the book, what kinds of church practices are mentioned in the New Testament, if only as a baseline. From page 8:

"For example, we know that the early church met in homes for their regular church meetings (Acts 20:20, Rom 16:3, 1 Cor 16:19). They took the Lord's Supper as a full meal (1 Cor. 11:21-34). Their church gatherings were open and participatory (1 Cor 14:26, Heb 10:24-25). Spiritual gifts were employed by each member (1 Cor 12-14). They genuinely saw themselves as family and acted accordingly (Gal 6:10, 1 Tim 5:1-2, Rom 12:5, Eph 4:15, Rom 12:13, 1 Cor 12:25-26, 2 Cor 8:12-15). They had a plurality of elders to oversee the community (Acts 20:17, 28-29, 1 Tim 1:5-7). They were established and aided by itinerant apostolic workers (Acts 13-21, all of the apostolic letters). They did not use honorific titles (Matt 23:8-12). The did not organize themselves hierarchically (Matt 20:25-28, Luke 22:25-26)."

How did things change, then? Why did they change? Although the details of the many specific changes fill this entire book, Viola posits that the root of all the alterations comes from one central flaw: a lack of belief that Jesus was enough.

"Ancient Judaism was centered on three elements: the Temple, the priesthood, and the sacrifice. When Jesus came, He ended all three, fulfilling them in Himself. He is the temple who embodies a new and living house made of living stones—"without hands." He is the priest who has established a new priesthood. And He is the perfect and finished sacrifice. Consequently, the Temple, the professional priesthood, and the sacrifice of Judaism all passed away with the coming of Jesus Christ.

"In Greco-Roman paganism, these three elements were also present: Pagans had their temples, their priests, and their sacrifices. It was only the Christians who did away with all of these elements. It can be rightly said that Christianity was the first non-temple-based religion ever to emerge. In the minds of the early Christians, the people—not the architecture—constituted a sacred space. ... Christians did not erect special buildings for worship until the Constantinian era in the fourth century. ...

"Neither did they have a special priestly caste that was set apart to serve God. Instead, every believer recognized that he or she was a priest unto God. The early Christians also did away with sacrifices. ... The only sacrifices that they offered were the spiritual sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving (Heb 13:15, 1 Pet 2:5)."

It occurs to me that as I talk about the whole division of clergy/laity that frustrates me that it might sound like sour grapes. I am, after all, one of the laity, not one of the people who put all the work and time and money and effort and sacrifice and learning into what's required to become one of the clergy. I absolutely do respect the professionals, who give and give of themselves to the church. I respect and love Christian scholarship, learning, and research, and enjoy reading and discovering more about the fiath. By nature that's the exact guy I am: the intellectual, the volunteer, the pouring myself-out guy, the leader. I feel like more of a semi-educated part-time volunteer clergy person than 'laity'. In other words, I know enough about being in charge and thinking I've got good answers to have enough of a chip on my shoulder that I can look down on people. I know, it's ugly, but that's the truth of it: It becomes pretty easy to feel self-satisfied.

Until the day, that is, that the people who you think you are trying to help turn out to have more of a handle on this whole "love" thing than you feel you do. Until the day you run headlong into a dose of humility and find that most of the 'laity' isn't that interested in accumulating hordes of information but is just trying to live a simple faith and trust in God, one moment at a time, one foot in front of the other. I have learned more about the grace, beneficence, love, and beauty of God by being a willing receiver of others' ordinary stories than I've grasped by reading the most eloquent apologies of the faith. I don't see myself as anti-intellectual or anti-clergy by any means, but as pro-laity, pro-freedom of speech, pro-respect for those hidden in corners, pro-wrestling with how that plays out in community. Because either Jesus Christ is alive, active, and available to everyone with the most simple belief in and love of him, or Jesus Christ is hidden behind a veil that is accessible to only the few with the most learning and wisdom and righteousness and devotion. We as the church preach the former, but what are we teaching with our actions, with our structures?

It's a popular view these days in the world that all religions are the same. Anyone can choose whatever path to God they're comfortable with because it's all about devotion and consciousness and routine and identity. What would happen to that observation if we turned back to the church without a temple, without priests, and without sacrifices/offerings/rituals? Wouldn't it speak loudly about the utter uniqueness of the Christian faith? The other common point of comparison between religions is the lists of do's and don'ts, the teaching of rules, the striving to be good enough to please a deity. Except that Christianity doesn't teach that. Christianity has no law but love. Christianity offers presence with God simply through confession of one's lack of goodness, not an accumulation of it. Christianity says you are bound with the creator the moment you first believe, not after earning a certificate or attendance badge or hard-work sticker. But as long as we are separated into two castes, those from the outside see a ranking and distinction between those who are really good and are closer to God, and those who are the herded sheep who hope to be good enough. We have tempered the uniqueness of our faith with a long-ago acquiescence to being more like our neighboring religions, and now it hurts us. Or so it seems to me.

Apparently I have a lot of tangents in me. (And something that feels like excited discovery, but maybe comes across as strong lecturing. Hmm. I apologize for that. I don't like to be the malcontent in general, publicly grumbling and complaining about how things should be done when in fact I'm not the one who is going to have to live with the consequences. Like I said, all churches, even home churches, are broken and filled with broken people. My ideals can't equal policy for everyone if I am not the one who's holding the buck when it stops. But I feel like things have shifted now that I'm involved with a simple church where my input is needed and valuable. So for me it's about putting down on paper these core ideas I've had, and that I'm learning, not to convince anyone else or to lecture, but to have something concrete to hold myself to and to have my friends and family hold me to as well. I hope that explains where I'm coming from.)

So, rather than keep going at this point, I will push off the first discussion of the actual chapters until part three. (I'll try not to drag this out forever because I really want to get to reading the second book instead of just writing and writing about the first!)

Reimagining church: a conversation, part one

2010-03-01T12:33:00.000-08:00

So, some of you might know that we are starting to meet with another two couples as a house church (or simple church, organic church, first-century church ... what have you).

All through my life, my Christian faith was rather cerebral, an accumulation of information. It was about knowing things, looking at things the right way. And so it made total sense to me that the centerpiece of my Christian experience was to hear a sermon on Sundays, that small groups were about working through a Bible study, and my most intimate moments with God were centered on a devotional or journal. My mind was the soil that most needed tilling.

Then something happened — it was a throwaway, an afterthought, that I started adding to our weekly Bible studies: I asked each person "How can you live differently because of what God has taught you today?"

I discovered rather soon that this question was not so simple. The assumption all those years had been that right thinking and right knowledge automatically turned into loving action, but this was hardly the case. I struggled to translate my faith and ideals into concrete and tangible action. Those in my group struggled. It occurred to me that the church has absolutely no training in place to help people imagine, conceive, plan, implement, fail, regroup, and find success at the very simple core of the faith: to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world, to love your neighbor as yourself. You're more or less on your own to do your best. Or, conveniently, we just lower our standards to being generally nice people and doing a service project to the unfortunates to check off that box. But actually attempting to apply the radical love of Christ to the relationships closest to us, ones with pains and pasts, to practice forgiveness and to be the one to risk rejection — that's the hard stuff. That's the stuff where we look around the room and see that none of the other Christians are working on it, so maybe we can sweep it under the rug as well. That's real life, where the rubber meets the road. That's where I want my faith to apply, to be tested, to be borne out. Suddenly absorbing information didn't seem so crucial anymore.

The typical church service began to take on less and less importance. I'd feel antsy. Muffled. I'd have all this stuff going on inside, but no chance to share or speak. The sermon might possibly touch on what I was going through, but usually not. Instead, it was with my small group that I could open up, to receive a blessing or an idea or an encouragement from God himself working through his people. I began to feel like we were made to be a real community, not just gathered next to one another. We should know each other's stories, we should minister to one another, we should each be active and alive and participatory, but the Sunday church service doesn't allow for that. (Even most Bible studies and small groups don't allow for that, where people maybe are allowed to emotionally care for one another, but spiritually it's often still an exchange of opinions of how one thinks about faith rather than an open examination and communication of one's life before God.) As I sit in pews, with everyone passive, I can't help but see what's lacking. Has the elevation of the stage and lectern not robbed us of the inheritance we have received to be priests and ministers to one another? Have we not been robbed of the ability and chance to testify to the aliveness of Jesus Christ by each-member sharing? Why is the laity disparaged as less-than?

Disillusionment with church was nothing new to me. I spent several years writing books with a pair of church planters when we lived in Indiana, popping the hood of American church culture and looking at everything at a nuts and bolts level. I saw flaws that weren't evident to me before. I heard stories of great ideas that fizzled in the face of reality. The mess of the church was on display to me. But I know that human beings are broken. Community is hard. It makes sense that church is going to be messy and imperfect. I'd always pick up the pieces of my frustrations and keep soldiering forward.

But unlike before, when I used to try to imagine church in a different way but knew that it was only a daydream, now I had experienced something concrete that I knew worked in empowering and challenging Christians in their faith, testifying to the power of Jesus in our lives, and binding us together community. No, it wasn't perfection, all problems solved. It had its off weeks, its hard conversations, its need for renewal and invigoration. But it was a place to start — a touchstone, a grounding.

I will probably get into more details of the formation of our house church another time, but suffice it to say that many other people, on the fringes of their churches, have experienced much the same thing I have. It felt like I was alone for so long, but all it took was a step of research, a response to an invitation. More than five million Christians belong to house churches in America, I discovered once I put feelers out for what else might be out there. Good conversations led to dinners and dreaming, and a feeling that we weren't alone anymore in these desires. It's not that within the institutional church there is no possibility of a full-life Christianity (life poured out into one another, unguarded and unmuzzled conversation about the heart, an active and participatory faith, a nurturing of love in all circumstances, lives as living a testimonies to Christ); I have of course just experienced this for the past five years. But too often the Sunday morning institution provides an out for me to put in my duty of listening and thinking and not do the living of Christianity. It was time to remove the safe and easy out.

I had meant to write only a short introduction before getting to my main point, but seeing as that didn't happen, I will end with a summary of what I hope to do in this series: write down my conversations with the books "Pagan Christianity?" and the follow-up "Reimagining Church" by Frank Viola. The house-church movement doesn't have an official spokesperson, probably because by nature it isn't organized or centralized or unified enough to elect or agree on one, but Viola would be one of the contenders if such a thing existed. He's been founding and mentoring home churches for decades in an apostolic role. One of the people in our new church plant recommended these two books as ones that helped him immensely in forming the basis of his understanding of house churches, and I wanted to be informed by them as we go forward.

I just finished reading the first, "Pagan Christianity?", in which Voila identifies nine elements of modern church life that do not stretch back to the words of the New Testament or the practices of the early church, but were instead adopted much later from pagan cultures. (Pagan not necessarily meaning "evil" or "tainted" but simply not Christian — the chair, for instance, and carpet, were invented by pagan cultures, and it does not necessarily taint us to use them as Christians. But on the other hand, many of the adoptions of form and function by the church had specifically negative impacts upon the central tenet that Christ was alive and evident in his people. Are our long histories of using church buildings, single-person pastorship, and inward-directed church funding essential to the Christian faith, or are they something God has let us live with against his underlying will, as with the Israelites and their desire to live under a king?) Nearly all of the nine elements have to do with one core idea that Voila finds most damaging: the separation of clergy and laity. The book is essentially about returning to the notion of "the priesthood of all believers," not just as a pretty ideal but by intentionally peeling away all of the structural elements of the church that impede it.

What I found fascinating about the book was just how many of these church assumptions that had been frustrating me for so many years — ones that led to a lot of doubt and fear on my part that I somehow was betraying something God obviously valued — were in fact of Greek influence, or royal decree, or shoring up of power among the elite. (Viola's observations doesn't mean that every Christian has to reject these elements of the church, just because they were introduced for a reason separate from the instructions of the apostles, but it shines a light so that the question can be considered rather than just assuming every element of tradition is always God-intended.) Viola's heavily researched book slays a lot of a sacred cows, but there wasn't a single one that rankled me because I'd already held these pieces of church at arms length over the past five or ten or twenty years. For me the book was more a wave of relief, for giving me pointed historical and theological reasons to let go of these stumbling blocks at last, instead of just my own vague discomfort. It was a welcome confirmation to discover that pursuing Jesus in this manner I've instinctively cobbled together is not only not unusual but historically prescient.

Nacho lasagna

2010-02-27T13:31:00.000-08:00

New recipe! Last night I decided to play around again with my favorite secret ingredient, spring roll wrappers. I've wrapped them around a million different ingredients from mushrooms & brie to salmon cream cheese, folded shapes from cones to pockets, and ranged from appetizers to side dishes to desserts. What I hadn't ever done was baked the wrappers flat, or attempted a full-fledged meal. What to do with plate-sized, flat crispy sheets? Well, the blog title and photo probably gave it away...

Here's what you'll need (serves three very hungry folks):
1 package spring roll wrappers (I like to use O'Tasty)
butter
1 box spanish rice
4 teaspoons hot sauce
1/2 medium onion
1 can spicy beans, drained
1 medium tomato
lime juice
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
sour cream
coarse salt
(optional) spicy enchilada sauce mixed with tomato paste

(You will want about ninety minutes to prepare the recipe, plus an hour or two to let everything cool. This recipe is served at room temperature so that steam doesn't sog up the crisp sheets instantly. But an illusion of heat is provided by the spices.)

Step one: Peel off spring roll sheets two at a time and butter them on one side with a very thin layer.

Step two: Bake in preheated 350-degree oven, sandwiched between two cooling racks on a baking sheet, for 6 or 7 minutes until wrappers are crispy and hold their shape, but aren't yet burnt.

Step three: Let wrappers cool while you put in the next pair. (After sheets are cool, I propped them up on their side next to each other, rather than stack them, so that any remaining heat or moisture could escape.) Repeat 7 more times until you have 15 wrappers total.

Step four: Make spanish rice, with hot sauce added from the beginning and with diced onion tossed in at the very end. You'll want to get this as dry as possible, so you could skimp a bit on the amount of water called for by the box.

Step five: Drain and rinse the beans. I heated the beans in the oven for a while to get them more dry (without being cracking). I also put half of a diced tomato in with the beans to get slightly cooked with the beans.

Step six: I reserved the other half of the diced tomato for a topping. Squeeze semi-dry and then douse them in lime juice.

Step seven: Take a break for an hour or two to make sure that things get dried out on the counter, on the stovetop, and on paper towels. Dryness is key.

Step eight: To give the dish more heat, I used some hot enchilada sauce thickened with tomato paste that we happened to have in the fridge from another recipe. It probably isn't worth duplicating just for a few smears on the plate, but you might you might be able to improvise something similar, a thick hot sauce of some kind.

Step nine: Start layering: First a spring roll sheet, then the bean/tomato mixture with cheddar cheese, then another sheet, then the rice/onion mixture, then another sheet, then repeat the steps a second time: Five sheets total, with two layers each of mixture.

Step ten: On top, add sour cream, diced tomatoes, and course salt.

Serve and eat immediately (as the layers will become soggy within ten to fifteen minutes regardless).

I should also note that this doesn't taste much different than the much easier regular plate of nachos ... but, hey, there's something to be said for presentation, right?

Seasonal Rick-Roll

2010-02-25T23:36:00.000-08:00

Cherry blossoms

2010-02-21T03:00:00.000-08:00

It's been amazing to drive around the last few days and see streets and neighborhoods dotted with cherry blossoms and apple blossoms in full bloom amid the other, still-barren, trees. Gorgeous.

X-ray bomb

2010-02-19T12:05:00.000-08:00

Buddy Sneaks Into Chest X-Ray

Tea time

2010-02-18T12:17:00.000-08:00

Continuing a virtual tour of our new kitchen stuff (after revealing our new dishes and new fridge), we have the Russell Hobbs electric kettle with tea tray (which seems to be an exclusive to Macy's and Amazon).

Amanda and I have grown rather fond of tea over the last several years (spurred on by enthusiasts Tiffany, Courtney, and Ian) but have had trouble making a habit of it. It doesn't seem like such a big deal to boil water and make a cup of tea ... but it does seem like a bit of a hassle to boil water and make a cup of tea five or six times a day. I tend to think about tea, then consider pouring a glass of cold water or grabbing a soda, and go for the immediate.

Ian, who hosts our small group on Tuesdays, owns an electric kettle and keeps us all supplied with tea throughout the night. It's much faster than the stove, doesn't do that annoying whistle, and is portable so that with guests you don't have to keep running back and forth to the kitchen. Would we drink more tea if we had one? It was worth a shot.

In researching kettles I came across this one that includes a glass carafe for brewing and tea tray for keeping it warm. Since I wasn't looking for that specifically, at first I passed it by as having double the counter footprint. But once I got into reading reviews (and found that a lot of electric kettles have their detractors) I returned to this one that had excellent reviews. In particular they were enthusiastic about the tea tray, saying that it kept tea warm all day at the perfect temperature without further concentrating the taste. In other words, you didn't need to brew one cup at a time. You could make a whole pot and it would stay warm not for just one meal but for a whole workday. There are million coffee machines out there that let you brew a whole pot and keep it warm (although it does tend to take on a more burnt taste), but I'd never seem the concept interpreted for tea.

We're only a week into using our new pot, but so far I completely agree with the reviews. It's so easy to brew four or five cups first thing, and then not have to think of it again. Then I can walk into the kitchen and hot tea is just as easy as a drink from the fridge. Especially with it being winter, I keep going for the tea, and sometimes make a second pot for the day. (And we have let it go for eight hours on the warmer with it tasting just like freshly made, although not on purpose.) I don't want to make promises — this is after all just the first blush of infatuation — but it seems like we might just have found the parameters in which we become not just tea fans but bona fide tea drinkers. Time to go restock the loose leaf!

Lent

2010-02-17T01:50:00.000-08:00

I grew up with virtually no reference to Lent, let alone a practice of keeping it. It wasn't until college that I discovered that many Protestants kept Lent, too, although their practices didn't always have to do with literally fasting or about giving up meat; it was more about an individual choosing to fast from some aspect of life that gets in the way of time with God or attention toward God. Since getting in on the practice, I have had mixed experiences. One year I gave up complaining. I have hazy recollections of giving up TV one year, and all meat one year, and I believe sweets another. Last year I gave up my endless browsing of news and information sites. These fasts have had varying degrees of success in pointing me in the right direction during the 40 days preceding Easter, and I have had varying degrees of connection to the idea of Easter Sunday being the ultimate feast day, when everything within me is allowed to breathe again, and celebrate and exclaim in utter joy — when life returns. (Returning to complaining, for instance, isn't exactly in the spirit of Easter.)

I am sometimes not sure why I observe Lent at all then, if it is so tricky to participate fully and intentionally in. Some years I simply have not bothered. But mostly what keeps me in the game is the social expectation of it. Not in a bad way, like bowing to peer pressure, but in a good way, in that it's one time of the year in which it's socially acceptable in my church to ask one another how we're doing at connecting to God. You just don't go around asking on Sunday morning: How are your devotions going? Are you reading the Bible daily? What's your prayer life like? (We do ask these questions on weeknights in my small group, though, because I think they're desperately important questions.) But for the most part they're awkward questions to bring up, even within the church where the only reason we're there is because we're hungry for God. Lent is the one time of the year where I feel like I can be publicly hungry for God, openly hungry, and in communion with other people who are openly admitting hunger for God. It's the camaraderie of it that's somehow only visible and tangible to me during Lent.

In the spirit of camaraderie, then, I've decided for the first time to adopt someone else's goal for myself during Lent. Rachel was kind enough to post on her blog her own wrestlings with what to do for Lent, and I like where she ended up: taking time to listen to an album of music each day. (I am particularly enamored by the idea of not just doing denial, but going right to implementing a method of deeper connection to God. After all, the denial is supposed to just be the means of getting one's attention and making real your limitations outside of God's provision, with the result an increased fervency of prayer and awareness and cognizance of God in our lives. Lent needn't be a season of careful eggshell-stepping but of richness and vitality.)

The idea of listening to music intentionally dovetails nicely with the spiritual goal that I'm working on right now in small group: to listen more fully. My goal is more along the lines of conversational listening, but it makes sense that music could help me with the discipline as well. Music usually requires the kind of between-the-lines perception I want to practice, which is to say: not just taking in the information, but the hearing the tonal message, the emotional component, everything that is hidden. There is suffering, and joy, and confusion, and anger, and love just beyond the words in both music and in everyday conversation. Artists shade their meanings and human being conceal their fullness out of politeness, and I am struggling to devote enough of my attention in the moment to notice these hiddennesses.

When I shared my Lenten goal tonight at small group, one person lent (ha!) me a CD to listen to. I like that idea of hearing new music these six weeks. I will probably take one day to listen to the playlist on Courtney's blog, since she so kindly posts one, and I haven't listened to the new list post-Christmas. If you, dear readers, have suggestions or possibilities to share, leave them in the comments. I have a lot of neglected favorites I want to reacquaint myself with over the next month and a half, but I also welcome the chance to learn to listen by listening to music that others love.

James Marsden, professional third wheel?

2010-02-15T10:15:00.000-08:00

I first saw James Marsden as Cyclops in the "X-Men" series, where he plays the devoted boyfriend of Jean Grey, who also happens to be the target of Wolverine's affections. (You can guess, since Wolverine got his own spin-off and Cyclops didn't, which mutant prevailed in being the most charismatically attractive.) His role seemed largely thankless in the series, starting out as team leader and devolving into literal irrelevance. But maybe that was just the character, right?

Then I see him in "Superman Returns," where he plays Lois Lane's paramour, who loses out to one Mr. Super Man upon his aforementioned return. His character still a stand-up guy, heroic in his own way and not your typical second-banana jerk, but it felt weird to me that he's take a role so similar to the Cyclops role.

Then he shows up in "Enchanted" as a brainless Prince Charming cartoon turned real person, always breaking out in song as he searches for his princess. It's a completely different tone than the other roles, comic and intentionally over the top, but, again, he loses the girl to the higher-billed male protagonist.

Now I've watched "The Notebook" (which is actually jumping backward sequentially), and again, he plays the exact same role, a stand-up good-guy fiancé to the girl who is really in love with the down-to-earth and passionate hunk.

What is is about this guy that screams: "meh"?

I realize that according to his IMDb page, he has 45 credits and I've only seen 4 of his movies, so this type-casting might just be a result of my selective sampling — but still, those are probably his most-seen screen credits.

Is his agent just vindictive or something?

Our first refrigerator

2010-02-14T13:32:00.000-08:00

I didn't think it would be that big a deal buying a new refrigerator, but even more than moving into our first home this new step impressed upon me the idea that we really own this place now.

The process of scouting for houses was very similar to scouting for apartments, and, particularly because we are in a condo and we have neighbors, it felt practically identical to moving into an apartment. The paperwork and the monthly payment were a little different, but the experience was the same.

Until our refrigerator started dying. It was time to get a new fridge. What did I know about getting a new fridge? It was like asking me to pick out streetlamps or park benches or a weather vane. I didn't know the ins and outs of it. My whole life the refrigerator was picked for me, and I didn't much fuss about it — it keeps things cold, right? How do you choose among thousand of varieties?

The first criteria to decide was color. White. That was obvious, as our plans for the kitchen involve a makeover in beach-cottage white, as opposed to the '80s cream we have now. The second thing to decide was: did we want to tear apart and re-do the kitchen from scratch, or work with the space for the refrigerator that's already there? We had briefly talked about gutting and remodeling the kitchen when we first moved in, but decided that we could mostly update the look significantly around the infrastructure that was already there. That decision significantly narrowed our options.

As it turns out, the cabinets come down rather low in our kitchen, making the height clearance a factor. Most refrigerators tend to assume that what people prize most in refrigerators is cubic feet. So most low refrigerators are also fat refrigerators, and with a galley kitchen, we wanted it to be both shallow, too. That took a lot of the options off the table, which was probably a good thing.

Then there was the decision of going used versus new. In general I like to shop at second-hand stores and on craigslist and save a significant amount on price. I found some potential options there, but there's something about major appliances that make me not want to futz around with older, unknown, unwarranteed models. Buying a $300 fridge for six or seven years of use might be a better value, but hauling in and hauling away refrigerators that many times doesn't appeal to me as much as getting a solid one that can be with us for a long while. It's kind of fun to think that this is the same refrigerator that Corin will be making meals from when he's home from college on break. (Assuming we didn't get a dud, of course.)

Once those decisions were made, it came down to the nuts and bolts: side-by-side, freezer on top or bottom, water dispenser, energy efficiency, arrangements of shelves and drawers, etc. The biggest factor in our decision comes from the fact that we've had top-freezer models ever since college, and for some reason, when bending down to look in the fridge, I tend to notice the first plane of food only, and things that get pushed to the back tend to spoil. I'm not sure if a bottom freezer will change that, but so far I really enjoy being able to open the refrigerator door, standing up, and seeing everything all the way to the back (which, keeping in mind its shallowness, isn't as far as before). I'm hoping that it will help me keep food spoilage to a minimum, which not only wastes money and food but leads me to avoid buying more of whatever has spoiled recently, which is usually fresh foods that I need to be eating more often rather than less often. The hope is that the design will effect good use.

So, it turns out there was only one bottom-freezer, white, shallow yet short fridge out there. It didn't have an ice maker or water dispenser, which I was on the fence about, but the tradeoff is that it has a really nice classic look to it, with slightly rounded doors that evoke that classic '50s fridge/icebox without mimicking its datedness. I wasn't expecting the level of beauty it adds to the kitchen, with its glossy rather than mottled finish, and sleek steel handles.

Our choice satisfied every criteria we had for our first major homeowner purchase, except ... well, price. Ah, well. If the fridge is to be here as long as we hope to be here, it will be money well spent in the long run.

Feeling better

2010-02-13T14:54:00.000-08:00

I had meant to post about this last week and ask for prayer from all my many many readers, but better late than never: Last week Amanda's cousin John was in Seattle to do some biking and was going to stay with us for the night, but when crossing a bridge his bike did a flip and he landed on his face, sending him to the emergency room.

A week later he's looking and feeling much better, but it was definitely quite a scare for us and for his parents. (John, on the other hand, was proud enough of his warrior scarring to have the nurse take pictures of his face to tweet out in real time.)

Here's a before and after (from his "In support of John Russell" facebook page):

Sneezy

2010-02-12T02:15:00.000-08:00

I've been told that last night, as Amanda was trying to put Corin to bed, he heard me blowing my nose downstairs and said angrily, "No, stop, Apa! No noise, too loud!"

Which of course reminds me of my own father, whose sneezes were legendary in our household. I remember even penning a rap back when I was in maybe junior high school (this was the '80s, and every kid rapped) for Father's Day that ended "and when dad sneezes, we all take cover!"

Good to know I've inherited it.

Pet peeve

2010-02-11T13:33:00.000-08:00

I was reading a book last night that used the oft-heard phrase "a faith that moves mountains" to describe someone who has incredibly strong belief. I hate that usage. Can anyone name a time in recorded history in which a mountain was lifted up and moved to another location as the result of someone believing hard enough? The common usage is often preached as an "anything is possible with God" kind of thing, but when the impossible fails to happen, we are left with the implication that one's faith was not strong enough. It communicates shame and self-doubt to anyone who fails to control space, time, and matter.

When Jesus says in the Bible that the temple would be destroyed and he would raise it again in three days, his audience laughed because they thought he meant the physical stones of the temple would be knocked down and rebuilt, but none of us today argue for Jesus' literalism because the Scripture follows up immediately and said he was speaking about his body, the new temple.

In the same way, when Jesus talks about "a faith that moves mountains," he was speaking spiritually of the Temple Mount. Jesus says: "In truth I tell you that if someone says to this mountain, 'Rise from your place and be flung into the sea,' not doubting in his heart but believing that what he says is done, so it will be for him." He says this at the site of the withered fig tree, just outside of Jerusalem, having just come from disrupting the Temple. He is explaining the fig tree in light of what they have just seen and experienced at the Temple Mount.

This passage is about putting one's faith in Christ himself and rejecting faith in Temple worship — not about literally lifting up mountains and tossing them into seas. No one in the history of the world, including Jesus, has ever done this. Yet somehow we get stuck with the phrase "faith to move mountains," and, especially for young believers, a faith that barely moves molehills is made to seem unauthentic, fleeting, and pitiable.

[/rant]

Football (the last word)

2010-02-08T01:14:00.000-08:00

The season has come to an end; I have now watched two whole football games in total after my 15-year absence, and I must say I'm extremely satisfied by the whole experiment.

What I'm interested in is watching great football games, and this Super Bowl was a beauty. I was particularly excited that, after my rant about Cinderella playoff underdogs spoiling the powerhouses from facing off, that the two top-seeded teams made it to the Super Bowl for the first time since 1993. I'd been dying to see a Vikings/Saints game and either a Colts/Saints or Vikings/Colts game all year, and I got my wish. Two unbelievable games, too. It felt worth it to have paid attention to the development of the season and seen the great players and coaching philosophies in effect, even through simple game highlights and sports blogs, so that the final games held so much more resonance. It was more rewarding to see how much the Colts and Saints played contrary to how they had during the season in an attempt to trick the other team into playing the wrong sort of defense, and then the ways in which their trademark big plays popped out from behind the curtain. Very dramatic. I was happy to celebrate in spirit with Saints fans (as they were able to live out the fantasies of 14 other NFL clubs who have been waiting for their city's first Super Bowl win), as well as feel the pain of Colts fans who have to live with that "so close" feeling yet again, dominating in the regular season and but only once pushing through to the Lombardi trophy.

Now I'm trying to decide what to do about next year. Do I need this extra hobby?

This year, during the regular season I mostly caught the highlights on NFL.com each week, then during the playoffs I taped the games and watched them by manually fast-forwarding through all the non-play parts of the game (which sorta mostly worked well) and then actually devoting time to watch the last three games in whole (but I only got to see about 2/3 of the Viking/Saints game because other things were going on simultaneously, and the tape snipped off the overtime period). So on the one hand I feel like I played it smart, and didn't waste very many afternoons on it, like I did with football in high school, and risk leaving Amanda a football widow. At the same time ... what if the Super Bowl hadn't been a great game?

It was still a lot of energy and attention I spent hoping that a three-hour block of time would be worth all the investment. If one team had simply dominated, as often happens in Super Bowls, it would have been a real let-down. It reminds me a lot of how I anticipate a coming movie for months or even a year and then after two hours it's so quickly all over. Or how I attempt to follow politics and learn the ins and outs of issues, but then after an election all the attention is over and the conversation and priorities move onto something else. (Politics more than sports or movies actually have consequences to the results of their big nights, but, as politics tends to be cyclical, one victory or another is never the permanent knock-out blow that each party imagines that each election will bring.) The point is: I experience a certain feeling of stasis, or a holding-pattern, or ennui, when my mind is so firmly entrenched in the future, waiting for that final verdict — and it's something I don't like giving into. It pretty much goes against the belief I have that being faithful in small things is vastly important.

Now, it's possible that football won't have to be the thing that gives. Perhaps it's just the constant checking in on blogs and opinion and pontification that fuels my anticipation throughout the season. (I gave up web-surfing in general for Lent last year — even before I had jumped back into football — and that definitely helped me pay better attention to present moments, to engage a bit more, so I know that information-dependency is a core issue for me.) On the other hand, maybe it's not that I need to cut something out, but need to add something on: a renewed commitment to weekly hospitality, more investment in simple and daily connections, more time for cooking and books and walks and prayer.

Whatever the answer, I just want to not be drifting — not to dwell in those zones where everything interesting is just past or just forward, and I exist only as a precursor to later events. I want to remember that today must be enough for what it is.

Super Bowl pep talk edition

2010-02-07T09:57:00.000-08:00

Two favorites of 2009: "Away We Go" and "Where the Wild Things Are"

2010-02-06T02:51:00.000-08:00

New review up at JoyOfMovies.com.

Classical music, part two

2010-02-05T10:56:00.000-08:00

Last week I quoted at length from the book "A Perfect Mess" about learning the true difficulties of performing classical music (which requires constant re-tuning on the fly by instruments to keep from sounding discordant as the temperatures and other ambient factors change). This week, I'd like to add one additional piece of information about classical music, at least of the eighteenth century variety, that fundamentally changes its conception in my mind:

"The opportunity — the imperative, really — for improvisation was explicitly written into baroque compositions and in more than one way. Bach and other composers of the time rarely spelled out parts for cello, bassoon, harpsichord, and organ note-for-note, instead providing the players of these and other low-range instruments suggested chords on which they were expected to riff. Concertos contained cadenzas that challenged the soloist to cut loose from the confines of the sheet music, and the resulting long, furious improvisations were often the highlights of performances. ...

"[Bach] would embellish at length at the organ, even in the middle of church services, apparently sometimes dismaying the officiators, choirs, congregations, and others who were simply trying to get through the liturgy. In other performances, he would take musical themes tossed at him from the audience and immediately improvise around them, much in the style of a contemporary nightclub comedian. ...

"Bach and his colleagues could not have predicted that by the middle of the twentieth century the improvisational elements of their competitions, and of all classical music, would have been gradually and thoroughly excised. Composers had later filled in the bass lines and cadenzas with note-for-note versions, so that today musicians play only what's on the page, and every performance is melodically identical to every other. ... It has been a centuries-long organizing project that almost certainly would have appalled some of the very composers we most ardently lionize. ...

"Throughout this book we've seen some of the ways in which mess and disorder, in their various forms, can be a great deal less harmful than they are usually made out to be. ... Let's add one more claim: mess and disorder can be beautiful."