⯑ ⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑ #Jesus #WalkOnWater

— Emoji Theology (@theomoji) November 20, 2014

⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑ #CannotSeparateUsFromTheLoveOfGod #Romans8

— Emoji Theology (@theomoji) August 1, 2014

⯑ ⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑ ⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑ ⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑ #FieryFurnace

— Emoji Theology (@theomoji) July 30, 2014

⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑ ⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑⯑ #FeedingTheMultitude

— Emoji Theology (@theomoji) July 18, 2014

In order to do this with our class, we had to find a way to print off emoji. A blog post by Nelson Aguilar was super helpful. Basically, you need to get the emoji pictures files then, as he writes, “In your printer settings, make sure to select Scale to Fit, then choose Print Entire Image to get the emoji to print in full-size. If you want to make it even bigger, you can select Scale instead and enter in a percentage number.” We printed each one on 8.5x11” paper.

I’ll save you some steps by giving you:

• A Dropbox file with the emoji.
•  A PowerPoint with some of those tweets, so you can give examples before you jump in to the project with the class.

Our lesson tonight was the Sixth Commandment: Thou Shall Not Commit Adultery. We looked at Martin Luther’s explanation of that Commandment in the Small Catechism: “We are to fear and love God, so that we lead pure and decent lives in word and deed, and each of us loves and honors his or her spouse.” Our discussion focused on what it meant to be faithful not only to spouses, but family, friends, and our neighbor—and the ways we  love and honor…but also disrespect others.

With that background, we jumped in. We gave each group about 50 emoji and asked them to represent/interpret the commandment, Luther’s explanation, or something just from their imagination and pin them up on some room dividers we have in our fellowship hall. After they were done, each group explained what they had done. The whole thing took about 30 minutes.

Here are the groups  laying them out, figuring out which emoji to use:

 

 

Here are the final products:

 

 The kids absolutely loved the project.

Here are two big reasons I think it worked:

• It was interactive and collaborative learning. They spent a full half-hour focused on how to interpret and communicate the ideas we discussed, and had a ton of fun.
• It used a visual language they already use everyday—but it didn’t require everyone to have a smartphone. (See more on visual languages in a blog post I wrote for the Instutite for Youth Ministry at Princeton.)

It was a great night. We’ll definitely be doing emoji theology again. 

My research and writing are well underway and there will be much more to share in the weeks and months to come, but in the meatime, I invite you to check out a series of blog posts I've written for the New Media Project on The Digital Cathedral. These posts should give you a sense of the project and some of the key ideas and images I'm employing. I hope you'll check them out and let me know what you think.

• The Digital Cathedral: networked ministry in a wireless world
• The Digital Cathedral: Doctor Who as model for digitally-integrated ministry?
• The Digital Cathedral: Coffeehouses as sacred media? Pubs as sacred space?
• The Digital Cathedral: Visual and immersive faith formation
• The Digital Cathedral: Shifting from Institutions to Networks

Also, I've set up a Facebook page as a place for kicking around these ideas and sharing quotes, images, and resources. I've also set up a Twitter account: @thedigcathedral. I hope you'll connect with me there.

Finally, thanks for your ongoing support for my work. It means more to me than you know. And thanks for joining me on this new adventure!

photo: Canterbury Cathedral; credit: David Merrett

 

Spoiling Advent

First, its adiaphora, which is a nice Greek word that means “it doesn’t matter”—it is inconsequential for salvation, and, in this case, one might say, just inconsequential whether your candles are purple, pink, or blue. So, why were so many people spending so much time debating it?

More importantly, there were so many posts that it seemed the season of Advent was being announced on Facebook with clerical arguments about candles and hymns. The overwhelming public witness about Advent was not about counter-cultural waiting, repentance, and anticipation of the incarnation. It was about which hymns and candles to use.

Isn’t this just like the church? We get into these arguments about these little things that only church people care about and everyone else beyond the church (and you know there are more and more of those, right?) must find it so completely irrelevant.

No one beyond the church cares about these things. Really. No one. And we wonder, “Why aren’t people coming to our churches?”

My co-author on Click2Save, Elizabeth Drescher, who is writing a new book on the religiously unaffiliated made the point by spoofing it:

“Must the candles match the alb? How many vergers are essential for the ritual lighting? Should the candles be in a row or a circle? All of these questions routinely came up in my interviews with the religiously unaffiliated. Said Raymond, a former Lutheran from St. Paul, MN, ‘I couldn't take it! The candles were wrong every freaking Advent! Every one! That's why I eventually became a Neopagan. They get candles right.’”

Liturgical Fundamentalism

What I see in this and many conversations around the church is a form of liturgical fundamentalism. We make the liturgy itself into God, in much the same way fundamentalists make the Bible into God. And whether you follow the proper rubrics becomes the measure of the quality of your leadership, and in some of these debates, apparently, your character.

At its worst, it becomes what I’ve come to call “liturgical fetishism”—getting so into the bows and the choreography and how many times the make the sign of the cross over the hosts that we drown out the Word and the powerful and beautiful simplicity of the Sacraments—all as if those little details are effective for salvation, or even proper worship. They’re not.

This is not what I learned in seminary, from my wonderful liturgy professor, Gordon Lathrop. I learned that one should approach the liturgy with gentility, humility, and humanity. Liturgy is the work of the people, but it also ought to serve people of God and is always sensitive to context. Liturgy is always pastoral with a small “p”.

We can worship with integrity across styles and contexts. We can debate liturgical practice in good fun, but when it becomes our primary witness, for one another and the people beyond our churches, then it is no longer a diversion, it is a detriment to the work of the church.

Hopefully next Advent we can announce this season an invitation to waiting, longing, love, and incarnation. Because, really, nobody cares about the color of your candles.

photo credit: Caitlin Doe

Arrival Time (10 minutes)

The physical space is rearranged from the usual set up. The tables and chairs facing the front of the room are gone. The lights are dimmed. An altar (card table with a tablecloth) stands in the middle of the fellowship hall, surrounded by a circle of chairs. Around the edges of the room are different stations: a comfortable sitting area with icons, two tables with art supplies, a table with candles to be lit. As usual, snacks are available by the kitchen. I played music by the Icelandic group Sigur Ros. Click here for the playlist I used on Spotify. I displayed a calming slide (pictured upper right) called Remembering Sabbath. Click here for a picture of it that you can put on a slide. I got the picture from Flickr attribution license area, which is a great place to find pictures. You can use and edit them as long as you give credit. Credit here goes to Moyann Brenn.

Settling In (15 mins)

I read the Third Commadment and Luther's explanation and then introduced Sabbath and our format for the night. We watched Rob Bell's NOOMA video called Rhythm, which doesn't talk about Sabbath per se, but talks about getting in tune, in rhythm, in the groove, with God's song. At the end of the video, I elaborated a bit on that theme as it applies to keeping Sabbath and our lives.

 

Sabbath Time, Open Space (20 mins)

The next 20 minutes were an open, low key time for kids to relax. One group of kids hung out in the comfortable seating area and talked. (Some had their phones out. We recognized that was one way kids relax, so we let it go.) Most people lit a candle, so by the end of the time our table was fully lit, and many did some kind of art or writing. Others just chatted quietly and had a snack. I played more of the Sigur Ros playlist.

Small Groups discussion (25 mins)

Then we broke into small groups and looked a scripture readings about Jesus going off on retreat, and we posed two questions: Why do you think Jesus went away by himself so often? Where do you find sabbath/rest/renewal in the midst of your busy life? I am increasingly drawn to the model that Pastor Paul Hoffman describes in Faith Forming Faith of people of deep faith and people relatively new to faith discussing Biblical texts. It's not a new idea, I know. But often we try to fill the time or entertain that we looks the beautiful simplicity of the way the Word can work on us—and how we form one another in faith. Click here for the handout we used.

Eucharist (20 mins)

Finally, we came back together and celebrated the Eucharist. We sang a Circle Song - a form of accapella singing that Bobby McFerrin teaches. We read prayers that people had written and put in baskets during the open time, and then continued with the Words of Institution. We communed each other around the circle and concluded with a blessing from the wonderful book, To Bless the Space Between Us.

Altogether, it was a very meaningful experience for the youth and our adult leaders. It reminded me of how desperately we need Sabbath in the midst of our always-on always-connected lives. 

It is also helping to get people to use the #udlc hashtag. Now people are using it on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This makes it easier to see what people are sharing and connect with them after church across those different platforms. I've been retweeting and favoriting from both my personal and our church accounts.

Thanks to this little slide our social media engagement has exploded.

Using my cellphone in church. It's OK - @prkanderson said so! #UDLC

— Brendan A. Niemira (@Niemira) October 13, 2013

Awesome message at #udlc today! :)

— Matthew Smeltzer (@MatthewSmeltzer) October 6, 2013

@udlcambler @prkanderson Post sermon, showed my brokenness and bunged up Communion! Sorry! Welcomed warmly anyway at #udlc. Come See!

— Margi Johnson (@Margi_Johnson) October 6, 2013

And when you get someone sharing something like this on their Facebook profile, well, its just a great spiritual message to pass on to your friends and followers.

How do you encourage people to check-in and engage with you on social media?

In Chapter 17, The Wrong Kind of Different, she writes,

"I know that people who don't believe in God might scoff at the idea that the creator of the universe has the time or inclination to try incessantly (and with not much long-term success) to change my heart. I get it. I just have no other explanation. …when God comes to me in the form of a friend who will be just enough of an asshole to tell me the truth, then it really is as if my heart had been ripped out of my chest and replaced with something warm and beautiful. And the whole procedure is simply too sudden and feels so literal and is too against my nature to be of my own creating."

Nadia names in Pastrix what (if we are honest) we ministry leaders feel and know to be true about ourselves, but don't let show, except perhaps in more honest and cynical moments talking to colleagues. Even then, those conversations are more about the faults of our parishioners than our own brokenness. We are broken, but feel we have nowhere to go with it. When, in fact, we are constantly surrounded by people as broken as we are—in our congregations, our neighborhoods, and our homes. We are all just pretending we're not.

Nadia's brutal honesty about her own brokenness, I think, opens the possibility for us to be honest with one another, and, therefore, to experience the grace of God she beautifully describes in Pastrix.

This book should urge Lutherans to take far more seriously than we do the Theology of the Cross and to not just use it as a theological tag-line, or an historical event, but a lived, daily, moment-by-moment reality in our individual lives and our faith communities.

A Post-Modern Preaching Life

Pastrix's narrative is often organized around Nadia's amazing sermons, which first appeared on her blog. These stories pull back the curtain on her sermon writing process, and her wrestling with the Revised Common Lectionary, which can feel inspired or sadistic depending on the Sunday you are preaching. Thus, Pastix, for me, contains echoes of Barbara Brown Taylor's classic work, The Preaching Life, but for a post-modern, post-9/11, millennial world. But here the references are gritty, urban, with an entirely new set of cultural reference points: 9/11, Columbine, Aurora, Occupy, and more.

What Nadia Means to Us

I want to take a moment to way what Nadia Bolz-Weber means to ordained-types like me out here. Like many, I became aware of Nadia's work through Facebook and Twitter, and her sermons, which she posted her homespun blog, quickly became required weekly reading. I, like many, recognized in Nadia a new, refreshing, honest voice in the church.

She has shown us that the Gospel, the liturgy, and inhabiting this liminal space we call being Lutheran, resonate today, both with hipster young adults, also the rest of us who wear suits and appreciate the work of a good dry cleaner. The core of our faith, our practice, and the Gospel still matter, they are still charged with the power to break our hearts and set us free. But they have been obscured by what I've heard Nadia describe as the "wrapping", that is, the cultural trappings of so-called golden era of the the 1950's and 60's, and, more recently, Boomer culture, which is lost on Gen-Xers like me, and completely foreign to the next great cohort, the Millenials. Honestly, I think the Boomers are tired of it too.

Lutheran theology and practice, especially in their most unadorned form, of the Eucharist, unaccompanied singing, contemplative prayer, and baudy or defiant hymn-singing in the bar, still speaks. Sometimes we need to strip it down, get out of the way, and let it Word work and the Meal heal.

Nadia is both a working pastor and a gifted theologian, and she demonstrates through the stories in Pastrix that we have to take Lutheran theology more seriously, not less. The ambiguities, the language of death and resurrection, the Cross—this is where people today live. It's where Jesus is. Where Jesus has always been.

My thanks to Nadia for this beautiful book. Along with you, I'll be praying this prayer about my calling, my church, my life: "Oh God, its so beautiful. Help me not fuck it up." Amen.