My good friend and blogger Adam Copeland has been talking a lot recently about pastors who use more than one Facebook profile. I will say that I have some friends who have decided to do this, and while I understand their reasons, it’s not the choice that I make, and not the choice I encourage others to make.

As someone who trains ministers and others on the use of social media at Social Media Boot Camps, I do not recommend that ministers use two separate Facebook accounts.

For one, if you do, you break Facebook Terms of Service (“You will not create more than one personal profile.”). However, I’m not one to generally be too concerned about specific fine print like that. So there are other reasons I encourage the use of one profile.

Also, I just don’t understand how people navigate having two profiles. Having to constantly sign in and sign out of different profiles, remembering which one you’re currently logged into, deciding who to accept as a friend on each specific profile…it all sounds like way more work than I’d want to put into Facebook. I spend enough time on Facebook for ministry, I don’t want to add to that amount of time having to organize two accounts.

For me, personally, it’s about transparency. If I have to create a separate, professional Facebook profile for people in my congregation, I feel like that isn’t being real or authentic. It doesn’t mean I don’t have boundaries, and it doesn’t mean that I post everything on Facebook (though, there isn’t much that I won’t share). But it does mean that people who are part of my congregation get to know the real me. The one who shares way too many photos of our cute baby boy. The one who constantly checks into restaurants, pubs and coffee shops around town. The one who posts controversial things politically and theologically. The one who wrestles through complex theological questions and ideas publicly on my blog.

But that’s who they hired. They knew about my blog, my online persona, and that’s who they wanted as their pastor. So why would I create a watered-down version of myself to share with them? Also, when I have posted particularly controversial things on my blog or Facebook in the past, I’ve often received some very positive feedback from folks.

That’s why I have only one Facebook profile. Because it’s playing by Facebook’s rules and I think it allows me to connect better with people I’m ministering with. But that doesn’t mean I don’t use Facebook’s tools, like Friend Lists. I think everyone needs to make much better use of Friend Lists. I have every single person I’m friends with on Facebook on one or more Friend Lists, especially everyone in my congregation. So when I want to post something that is really NSFCF (Not Safe For Church Folk), I can still do that using Friend Lists by omitting certain lists, or only posting to certain lists.

So that’s how I navigate the Facebook/ministry world. And I feel pretty strongly about it. But you know, if someone has very specific needs and reasons for having two profiles, that’s fine and I’m not going to second guess them.

What are your thoughts? Should ministers, teachers or other people have one or two Facebook profiles?

This post is part of an ongoing blog series on Pomomusings entitled “(Re)Imagining Christianity.” To read about the series, as well as get a full schedule of participants, click here.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that must die so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

First off, I want to thank all those who contributed to the (Re)Imagining Christianity blog series. The past two months have been filled with some wonderful conversations here on this blog. Some of my favorite have included Lars Rood on why we need younger voices in the church, Sarah Bessey musing on the practice of testimony, Bethany Stolle saying we need to get rid of nostalgia, and John Vest calling for the death of everything that makes Christianity an institution.

I’ve been thinking about what I wanted to contribute to this series as it ends, and I’ve spent the past couple days pondering what needs to die so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years. My answer? Theological orthodoxy.

Orthodoxy was a big thing in college when I was a religion major. It was very important to many of us to make sure we had the most “orthodox” perspective on a certain theological issue. Saying that one person had the “orthodox” position was synonymous with saying that person was “right” and everyone else was wrong.

And that doesn’t seem to be something that’s really going to help Christianity flourish in the coming future. Right belief may have been a priority in the past, but as we move toward an understanding of belonging, behavior, belief, it appears that something else has replaced belief as the priority component of Christian faith that more churches should probably be focusing on.

After writing this blog post, I was reading Diana Butler Bass’s new book, “Christianity After Religion,” and ran across this quote from Harvey Cox’s book “The Future of Faith“:

“Faith is resurgent, while dogma is dying. The spiritual, communal, and justice-seeking dimensions of Christianity are now its leading edge…A religion based on subscribing to mandatory beliefs is no longer viable.”

Diana goes on to quote another friend and theologian, Dwight Friesen, who says that “Jesus had no interest in orthodoxy, but rather offered his followers ‘a full and flourishing human life.‘”

As a pastor who works with children, youth and college students, I’m not so much concerned that they have theological orthodoxy, or right beliefs, but that they are seeking, doubting, asking questions, engaging with the story of God, and more importantly, living lives that seek to follow the way of Jesus the Christ.

Think what would happen if conservative (theologically) parents decided it was more important to love their LGBT son or daughter than trying to make a theologically orthodox argument about why it’s wrong for them to be the person whom God created?

Think what would happen if all the churches in your town became less concerned with theological orthodoxy, and became more concerned with how they could unite and work toward bringing about God’s shalom to your community?

Think what would happen if the churches and interest groups in your denomination decided it was less important to take each other to “church court” and more important to actually join together and find new ways to reach out to people in our nation and world who feel hurt and betrayed by a church that claims to bear the good news of the Gospel?

Okay, I can already hear some of you. “There you go! We knew it! All of this progressive/emergent theology is nothing but theological relativism. You don’t have any respect for the word of God!”

Does this mean anything goes? Perhaps it sounds like I’m contradicting myself, but I don’t think this necessarily means anything goes. I think there are some beliefs that are hateful, hurtful, incorrect and not synonymous with the love and grace of Jesus. There are probably some times when we need to do some redirection, theologically.

But I think this frees us from theologically policing our children, youth, college students and congregation members. If people are truly striving to live out the gospel, to share the love and grace of Jesus Christ with others in their lives, to embody the shalom of God in the world with all people….I think it’s probably okay if someone decides there’s no hell, someone else struggles with predestination and someone else doubts the Jesus is the only way to salvation.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that we must hold onto and live out more fully so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

However, it’s not just about what needs to die in order for Christianity to truly impact the world in the future. There is plenty about our faith that causes Christians to do so much to work towards God’s kingdom. I think the one thing we must hold onto is the idea that we are able to partner with God, to become co-creators in this world.

Unfortunately, there is a lot that has, over the years, caused Christianity to become viewed as a somewhat passive religion. Our Sunday morning worship doesn’t help much, as we ask people to come to church, sit (and stand, from time to time) and hear music, hear choirs sing to them, listen to beautifully-crafted prayers and sit and passively receive a sermon from the “expert” in the room. There isn’t much that happens on a Sunday morning in many of our churches that is particularly active.

However, embracing this idea that we are called to partner with God and work toward helping to bring about God’s kingdom is an active, engaged, wholistic concept. The missional church has helped to bring this idea to the forefront with the idea of focusing on God’s mission. It’s not that each and every church needs to get together and create their own mission statement. No, it’s about looking for where God is already active in the world and look to find new ways to join in God’s mission.

If we, on a regular basis, find ways to continually remind people of the active nature of our faith, I think that might help create a more vibrant and expressive version of our faith. We might see that people can more readily get behind a faith that calls us to act, instead of simply agreeing to a list of doctrines and beliefs that are “theologically orthodox.”

Adam Walker Cleaveland: I write this blog.

I’ve spent the past week in Washington DC at the “Children, Youth and a New Kind of Christianity” conference. It’s been awhile since I’ve been at a Continuing Ed event and it was a great chance to get to connect with some friends (old and new), do some networking and hear from some great folks. I thought I’d just share some highlights and then offer a few comments.

Best Presenter: Patricia Lyons
While I struggled at first to keep up with her pace and excitement as she shared about her conversion to Harry Potter, her presentation was definitely a highlight of the conference. She was a presenter who made a relevant presentation about how to read the language of our culture to communicate good news to children and youth today. Add to that the fact that she was hilarious and wearing a Harry Potter robe and had a wand…a great presentation.

Best Workshop: Michael Novelli and Rebekah Lowe – The Art of Bible Storying
Michael and Rebekah offered a wonderful interactive and participatory workshop after the conference officially ended. It was based on Michael’s work on bible storying (his book is “Shaped By the Story“). I think this was a great way to end the conference, where we actually learned about a new way of doing youth ministry (which I think is what many were hoping for at the conference). If you’re not familiar with Michael’s work, be sure and check out Echo. And Rebekah has done some amazing work translating his work specifically for children’s ministry.

Best Interactions: Those Over Meals
I loved seeing some old friends and meeting new ones over meals this week. Isn’t that where some of the best conversations happen at conferences? John Vest and I shared a great dinner at Matchbox the first night, and although I chipped my front tooth on a fork, it was great to talk about ministry and the middle east. I met some other new friends, as well as finally made some face-to-face connections with Twitter/Facebook friends, so it was a great chance to converse, collaborate and commiserate with colleagues.

Best Awkward Interaction: Twitter lady
The most awkward interaction I had came when a young woman (not much older than me) came over to me after one of the sessions was finished. Shane Claiborne and some others had just spoken, and instead of presenting anything that sounded remotely like “a new kind of Christianity”, Shane shared the same stories he’s always shared if you’ve heard him speak anytime in the past 5+ years. Other presentations weren’t that great and the snark level on Twitter was increasing. This young woman came up to me and said, “Your tweets are causing me to not enjoy this conference.” I said, “I’m sorry.” She said, “I get the feeling that you think you could do this conference better…which maybe you can…but you didn’t. So.” I said, “Thanks for letting me know.” And she said, “Thanks for listening. Christian to Christian.” Awkward. I wanted to say “Don’t read my tweets” or “You know – this is kind of part of what happens at events like this nowadays, there is often a sidebar conversation happening.” But…I decided to just thank her for her comments.

Reflecting on the Conference

As with any conference, there are always things that you like, things that speak to where you’re at, things that you’ve heard before and things that you’re just not interested in. That was the case with me and this conference. However, I think there were many of us who weren’t quite sure that the overall theme and vibe of the conference matched up with what we were hoping for.

Brian McLaren was one of the big initial supporters of this conference, and because the conference was named after one of his new books, I think that many of us thought that the themes in his book, and the general “emerging church” vibe might be more prevalent at this event. Below is how he has been introducing the conference ever since the website went up.

Again, no conference is going to meet everyone where they are. I heard many people say they were walking away having learned a ton of new things and were taking a lot home with them. And that’s great. But with the crowd that I was hanging around, the folks who have been involved in the Emergent/emerging church/church emerging conversation for quite awhile, I think we were all hoping/thinking that this conversation was going to be more geared toward emergent/emerging church thought, theology and practices, and what that would look like for children and youth ministry.

During Brian McLaren’s talk the first night, he mentioned that we’ve been doing these emerging church events geared toward theology, worship, church plants and ministry with adults for a long time, but now we were going to be able to have a chance to talk about these issues related to children’s and youth ministry.

I think that’s a worthy goal and something that’s needed. I’m just not sure this conference actually accomplished that goal. Some of it probably had to do with the way the conference was structured. I think a lot of it had to do with the folks they brought in as speakers. I also found that it was humorous that McLaren mentioned in the video above that one of the problems is the stock curriculum that we all have and use that doesn’t address the cultural changes that are taking place – but many of the sponsors and exhibitors at the conference were those who provide that type of curriculum.

At any rate – I do want to thank Dave Csinos and all those who helped to put this conference together. I think it was a wonderful opportunity to get together with people, and I am leaving with some new ideas about how to do children’s ministry (which is what I was hoping for). I just think that if they do another conference, or if other folks put on events addressing this issue, that we really do strive to not just repackage the old, but that we truly seek out what a new kind of Christianity looks like in children’s and youth ministry.

Some other folks have written about the conference below:

• Carl Gregg shares highlights

This post is part of an ongoing blog series on Pomomusings entitled “(Re)Imagining Christianity.” To read about the series, as well as get a full schedule of participants, click here.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that must die so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

Performance.

I have been performing in one sense or another since I was six years old. Whether it was acting professionally as a child, or learning the music business during my college days in Los Angeles, or spending my 20s as a worship leader, my life experience taught me that if I can perform artistically at a high level, I can succeed.

As a result, I’ve unconsciously centered my relationship with God and my community on a determined performance mentality.

But I don’t think I’m alone when admit my greatest fears:

• If I can’t perform, where do I find my value?
• If I can’t perform, how do I know that I’m necessary or doing the right thing or honoring God?
• If I can’t perform, will anyone in my church community still care about me?

Within the Church, this emphasis on performance is widespread. Rachel Held Evans created a buzz around Facebook and Twitter with her post that lamented the performed “coolness” of the American church. We constantly tell church goers to attend this small group or that ministry, read this book or go to that conference, practice this discipline or serve there. We give them a big performance every weekend through our light shows and our rock bands and our dynamic teachings. And none of these facets of church life are bad in themselves; they’re wonderful if executed for the right reasons and led by the Holy Spirit.

But for a broken 28 year old worship leader like me who often finds his self-worth in his ability to perform, this laundry list of possible Christian achievements and these large Christian venues only feed my misunderstanding that my value is found in what I can produce or achieve.

When Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,” I wonder if He was, in part, speaking to performance-addicted people like me.

I wonder if He was simply saying, “I know you think you need to perform to find love and acceptance and value, but really, I love you and accept you and ascribe value to you in your weariness and in your brokenness.”

Maybe He was saying to us that His grace and His blessing and His friendship is freely given, not dished out based on the facades of our constant role playing.

And maybe we would be better off if we, the Church, stopped trying to perform our way through this life.

Kevin Carey: Kevin is the Student Ministries Worship Leader @cornerstoneweb in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is also a composer and film orchestrator on the side.  You can find more of his work at www.kevingeorgecarey.com, as well as follow him @kcougs or at facebook.com/kevingeorgecarey.

This post is part of an ongoing blog series on Pomomusings entitled “(Re)Imagining Christianity.” To read about the series, as well as get a full schedule of participants, click here.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that must die so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

Brainstorming women, armed with their Sharpies and poster boards, are going to battle. If you haven’t heard, there is a “war on women.”

Is this hyperbole? Is this “war on women” tagline merely something that can unite the various feminist waves into one tsunami that has real influence?  Is this “war on women” a cheap trick by liberal political operatives to highlight how out-of-touch and extreme conservatives have become on social issues? If there’s a war going on, who is attacking women anyways?

The sad truth? Christianity wages war on women. How are we doing it?

Constraint. Right now, on the 21^st Century blogosphere, Christians argue whether women should keep silent in churches. That’s right. It’s 2012 and they believe that women are so subordinate that we should not even be allowed to ask questions in a Bible study. First Timothy explains that Eve tasted the fruit first, so two thousand years later, anyone with XX chromosomes should not open their mouths within the walls of a church. If that logic is not a contrived recipe for oppression, I don’t know what is.

In many congregations, women cannot become pastors, elders, or deacons. Leadership is barred from women. Where else in society does that explicitly take place? I can’t think of any place other than a couple of absurd golf clubs in the South.

Contraception. With the stunning, quick rise of Rick Santorum’s candidacy, we learned what many religious leaders think about birth control. We have not only found out that every sperm is sacred, but that women who use birth control contribute to the downfall of society.

Even though most women in the United States use contraception, even though there is nothing in the Scriptures that would explicitly keep a woman from using it (aside from an odd verse about a Jewish patriarch who got in trouble for “spilling his seed on the ground”) Christian leaders have taken this moment to expound upon how shameful it is for a woman who just might not want to have a child every time she has sex, or even if she might want to take the pill for other health reasons.

Collusion. So, maybe you’re a guy. You believe that women should speak in church. You believe that women should be able to use contraception. You don’t think this is an issue. You might even have daughters. But… this whole subject is kind of a fringe thing that you’re not really into… so you’re just going to let TeamUteri take care of it, while you sit on the sidelines. Since we have a Christianity that is, for the most part led by men, when men do not speak out, or stand with women who are, you end up colluding. Silence allows the dominant mode to flourish.

Women can collude as well. Mainline women feel like we’ve “been there, done that.” We roll our eyes at our evangelical sisters who struggle. We have great respect for the nuns who taught us liberation theology, but are now getting the smack down. But we shrug a bit thinking, It sucks to be them. Instead of realizing that we are all women and this is one faith, and we have got to start working together. We do not have the luxury of not caring about the oppression of women in our faith tradition.

How can we reimagine Christianity in the midst of this?  We can begin by asking ourselves how we tell our narratives. Do we propagate the narrative of patriarchy? Do we talk about the great, all-powerful God the Father who will protect us and take care of us if we grovel and show the proper fealty? Or do we utter a vision of a beloved community in which God made each of us in God’s image to care and love one another? Do we speak of an angry, warrior God who can only atone for our sin with the payment of blood? Or do we speak of the salvation that comes from becoming born-again by the Spirit?

In our tradition, Christianity has been a force of salvation and liberation for women. It has also been used as a tremendous tool of oppression. As we think about the future, can we stand with those who struggle, speak with those who protest, and nurture the narratives of community and hope? If we can, it will go far in creating a more compassionate faith.

Carol Howard Merritt: Carol is a pastor at Western Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC. She is the author of Tribal Church and Reframing Hope, and she co-hosts God Complex Radio with Derrick Weston. She blogs at TribalChurch.org, which is hosted by the Christian Century.

I’ve been using an app to take, edit and share photos for awhile…you may have heard of it…it’s called Instagram. Well, I’m sure you have heard of it, because Facebook bought it for about $1 billion. Not bad, huh? At any rate – for amateur iPhone photographers like me, Instagram is a blast, and a great way to share your photos. Recently, a new service called Instacanv.as opened up – and is starting to offer art galleries for Instagram users.

My gallery just opened up today, and while I’m not sure that I’ll actually get any purchases – I thought it was worth a shot. Caleb needs a good college education, so you got to start somewhere, right?

These are actually supposed to be really impressive canvas prints. They say this about the quality of the prints:

We’ve developed proprietary image resizing technology that enables us to make beautiful canvas prints, up to 20″x20″ in size, from Instagram photos. We’re so sure you’ll love your print that if you don’t we’ll take it back and refund all your money (including shipping).

As soon as I’ve saved up a bit of allowance money, I think I’m going to order this print. It was one of my favorite shots of trees/leaves from Livermore. Below is just a sampling of some of the types of prints you can order. They would make some great Mother’s Day presents!

This post is part of an ongoing blog series on Pomomusings entitled “(Re)Imagining Christianity.” To read about the series, as well as get a full schedule of participants, click here.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that must die so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

As many have stated in this series already, there are likely many things which ought to die so that the faith can move forward in an impactful way. Some of these things deal with the organization of the church; others with the beliefs of the people who make up the church. It is of the latter that I think a monumental change must take place.

What I am going to say may sound frightening. It may even sound a bit heretical. Obviously, I believe it is neither overly frightening nor heretical, although I certainly anticipate that some who read this will question it. Good. We need more questioners in the church.

My idea is that we need to let our worship of the bible die. Completely get rid of it. Burn it to the ground. What is this worship of the bible, you say? Well, simply put, it is the deification of the scriptures which has taken place in American Evangelical Christianity. The notion that the bible is “the very word of God”, elevated to the same level as Jesus (who, if we recall, is the Word of God incarnate); created to be a sort of fourth member of the Trinity.

We have God the Father, we have Christ the Son, and we have the Spirit. Well, we also have the good book. And the problem is the good book has taken on a role of being something that is Holy, magical, powerful on its own accord. Some look for special meanings in the way the verses are written. Others seek a connection with God through study of the scriptures and memorization of their words. Vastly more simply read the words and ask people to do what is written in them. After all, if Paul says he likes turnips and dislikes carrots that must mean we all need to dislike carrots, right? Or more likely, if Paul tells a group of believers in a struggling young church how to go about disciplining wayward members, which means we too must discipline our wayward members in the same way, correct?

Lots of churches hold this sort of view. A very large church here in Seattle says they are a “bible believing church”, and they read the gospels with a black and white mentality. If it’s in the bible, it must be “true”, whatever that means. There is no room for dissenting opinions. No area to question. The church needs more people who question.

This calls to mind another of the great Abrahamic faiths; Islam. In Islam, the Quran is the literal word of God. You can’t translate the Quran from the Arabic, because God’s word is found in the Arabic documents, and God’s words don’t change. You can get an English version of the Quran, but it ceases to be the Quran to some degree once it has undergone this translation. Neither can you interpret the Quran (I know, I know, anyone reading anything is interpreting it through their own hermeneutical lens, but lets just assume that the great Imam’s of the faith aren’t actually interpreting it). The point is that Muslims believe the Quran is the word of God. Anything God wants to say to humans is said in the Quran.

Christians, on the other hand, generally believe something else entirely. The faith holds that Jesus Christ is the Word of God. Everything God wants to say to humanity is said through the incarnation of Christ, affirmed through the Holy Spirit. The scriptures are the accounts of God’s people written down, through history, of how God interacts with a particular tribe and people. The scriptures hold meaning and relevance, and they are a wonderful tool that point us to the living center of the faith; Christ.

The problem then becomes when various churches and religious leaders open the scriptures and read them as law. It’s tough to relate to a God that is abstract and at times aloof, so instead we like to open the Bible and relate to God in a simple, black and white way. It’s a temptation, and for a lot of people, it makes being a Christian much easier when you feel like you just have to follow a set of rules or guidelines. This can create a unified mentality in a church, but it stifles creative expression and differing opinions, and eventually leads to groupthink.

My challenge to the church in the next 100 years is to begin to imagine what it would be like if we didn’t have a simple answer to many of life’s questions. It is tempting to flip open the Bible and seek out the answers in its pages. The God of the universe has come to us incarnate, given us the Spirit of life, and is unfettered. We should celebrate the scriptures and learn from them, use them as our guide and as a wonderful tradition of the church, consult them and allow them to create the prayers and the language of God’s people. But the Word of God is Christ, and that is exciting.

Jeffrey Maxin: Jeff is a case manager on the Inpatient Psychiatric Unit of Seattle Children’s Hospital. He attended Seattle Pacific University, and later graduated from Princeton Seminary with a Masters of Divinity in 2008. While not working with hurting adolescents and children, Jeffrey enjoys gardening, watching baseball, and exercising. You can follow him on twitter @jeffreymaxin

This post is part of an ongoing blog series on Pomomusings entitled “(Re)Imagining Christianity.” To read about the series, as well as get a full schedule of participants, click here.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that must die so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

Am I limited to just one thing?

There are lots of little things I could list, and plenty of big ones too. But to sum up what I think needs to die in order for the gospel to truly make an impact in the world, I would kill or let die everything that makes Christianity an institution.

I’m not just trying to riff on Andrew Sullivan’s recent Newsweek cover story or the “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” guy. I’ve been thinking this way for some time—which is perhaps ironic coming from a pastor that works at one of the largest (and most institutionalized) Presbyterian churches in the country. But it is precisely this experience, along with the experience of being involved in denominational work at both the local and national levels, that leads me to think this way.

I should clarify, though: I really love my job. My call to do youth ministry at a large urban church is incredibly fulfilling and I definitely feel that this is where I should be right now. I also appreciate the good that can be accomplished through national and local forms of denominationalism. And I can’t deny that I enjoy the support and security of working as a religious professional in an established and resourced institution.

But, I’m not convinced that this is the only—or best—way for us to be church now or in the future. So I guess that what I’m really doing is dreaming a little here, which I think is what Adam is hoping to encourage in this series on (Re)Imagining Christianity.

My biggest concern about institutional religion is the incredible amount of time it takes to maintain the institutions, from denominational structures all the way down to local congregations. Even those who claim to be non-institutional seem to spend a lot of time making and defending that claim. And any congregation, whether it stands on its own or is connected to a denomination, takes a lot of effort to maintain.

When I think about the countless hours I have spent in meetings, committees, assemblies, and commissions at every level of the Presbyterian Church (USA), I wonder if I’m actually doing God’s work in the world or if I’m really just wasting the precious time God has given me.

Again, I know these institutions do a lot of good work for God’s kingdom. And, I do think that the gospel is proclaimed when people of faith struggle to live and work together for the common cause of God’s kingdom. But it strikes me that Jesus gave us a way of life, not blueprints for a new institution. In fact, it’s hard to make much connection at all between Jesus’ radical vision of God’s kingdom emerging in the world and the institutions Christians have built up around that vision.

Another concern in that the institutionalization of religion, at least as it happens in North America, results in the compartmentalization of religion as just one of many institutions vying for our attention, time, and resources. Again, Jesus gave us a way of life, not a set of programs to meet our consumerist needs or desires. Institutionalized religion inevitably becomes just one small—and often individualized—part of our lives. But it seems to me that what Jesus really intended for us was a way of being that encompassed our entire lives, not one isolated aspect of it.

Related to this concern is the problem of clericalization. In institutionalized Christianity, pastors become the primary doers of the kingdom work that the entire church should be involved in. We become both professionals that are paid to do the work of the church and vendors providing services for the members of our congregations. And, despite Reformation impulses to the contrary, Protestants maintain a divide between “clergy” and “laity” that only reinforces the overall institutionalism of the church.

While I still believe there should be people who devote their lives to theological study and proclamation—which seems to me to be the only meaningful distinction between clergy and the rest of the church—I wonder if Christianity could make a widespread transition from a religious institution to a way of being that shapes every aspect of our individual and collective lives.

It is already abundantly clear in North America that we have entered a post-Christendom era. The hegemony of the church in Western culture is a thing of the past. (Though echoes of Christendom clearly persist.)

What if we pushed this trajectory all the way to the end? What if the institutionalized church as we know it in the West is completely dismantled? How would Jesus’ vision of God’s emerging kingdom be expressed in that context?

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that we must hold onto and live out more fully so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

In one word, what I think the church needs to cultivate is a sense of urgency.

I’ll admit that this may be more about my experience with progressive mainline Protestantism. I grew up in the kind of fundamentalist evangelicalism that at least preached (if not practiced) a sense of urgency about the eternal fate of humanity. As a young person, I was encouraged to be concerned about the eternal salvation of my family and friends. If you take that kind of thinking seriously, sharing the gospel becomes very urgent indeed.

I’m quite content now to be in a different place theologically. Like many progressive mainliners, I don’t think that what happens when we die is really the point of the gospel of Jesus (as opposed to the gospel about Jesus). I think that Jesus was much more concerned with transforming individual lives and the world as a whole in the here and now.

But, in the process of re-imagining the gospel in a this-worldly way, I think that progressive Christians have lost the sense of urgency that comes with pondering whether or not your loved ones (and total strangers) are going to suffer eternal torment in hell. While I don’t want to go back to that, I do want to reclaim the sense that our calling to live out the gospel of Jesus has real urgency. While it may not be about heaven and hell, the salvation of the world does depend on us participating in God’s work of redemption.

We don’t need to imagine an after-life hell in which God’s children might potentially suffer. God’s children are suffering in real-life hells right now, all around the world. People around the globe are hungering not only for food but also for peace and reconciliation. Why doesn’t the church—which is supposed to be shaped by the love of God and the love of neighbor—drop everything else and not rest until all of God’s children are saved from unnecessary pain and suffering? (It’s probably because we’re spending too much time maintaining our institutions.)

For the church to impact the world in the next hundred years, we need to remember that there is a lot at stake in what we do (or don’t do) with the gospel. We need to start acting like the church exists for something urgent—not the self preservation of our institutions but the salvation of the world.

John Vest: John is the Associate Pastor for Youth Ministry at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago and blogs at johnvest.com. He is well trained in institutional religion with an undergraduate degree in religious studies from Rice University, a year of study at  Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and an MDiv from the University of Chicago Divinity School. After continuing at the Div School to complete coursework for a PhD in Hebrew Bible, he changed his course of study and is now working on a DMin at McCormick Theological Seminary. He is passionate about BBQ and makes regular (though rarely kosher) burnt offerings on his Holy Smoker. He finished writing this blog post in a hotel room in Las Vegas en route to a much needed vacation from institutionalized Christianity in the deserts of Utah.

This post is part of an ongoing blog series on Pomomusings entitled “(Re)Imagining Christianity.” To read about the series, as well as get a full schedule of participants, click here.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that we must hold onto and live out more fully so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

Too many of us have forgotten the major facet of Christianity that set the 1st-Century religious world on fire: Reconciliation. If you were a woman and wanted to speak freely, or a slave and wanted to be treated equally or a Gentile and desired to be treated like someone who could actually love and be loved by God, then the swelling church that worshiped Jesus was the place to be.

Or at least it was supposed to be.

If you cranked up your flux capacitor and landed back in the first century, it wouldn’t take too long to notice that the burning issue of the day was who is “in” and who is “out” in the Christian church. The “Jerusalem Council” in Acts 15 (and just about every word from the pen of the Apostle Paul) emerged as a result of the percolating debate regarding who could claim the name of Jesus. Quickly, though, the Apostles made decisions about it. They determined the church to be an all-skate.

The Apostle Paul, when describing the purpose of the Jesus event, wrote, “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility” (Ephesians 2:14-16).

Radical hospitality and inclusion was the core of what it meant to be Christian. This impulse has been lost and found time and again throughout the years. Martin Luther King Jr, once said, “But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. The type of love that I stress here is not eros, a sort of esthetic or romantic love; not philia, a sort of reciprocal love between personal friends; but it is agape which is understanding goodwill for all men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. It is the love of God working in the lives of men. This is the love that may well be the salvation of our civilization” (from The Role of the Church in Facing the Nation’s Chief Moral Dilemma, 1957).

Yet everywhere I look, Christians are not simply a part of division, we are at the heart of it. Each time I turn on “Christian” television or radio, my brothers and sisters on the political right treat me to a litany of enemies – the GLBT community, Democrats, judges, elites, socialists, Muslims, and anyone who ever thought Muslims, Democrats gays and lesbians, judges, elites, and socialites were not inherently evil. The lack of reconciliation streams in from the left side of the political spectrum too. My more liberal kinfolk disdain the 1%, corporations, Evangelicals, the NRA, and anyone demonstrating the least bit of understanding and affinity for them. And obviously, there remains the tried and true divisions of old – black, white, rich, poor, city, country. It seems we spend an awful lot of time figuring out ways to bisect and carve up one another.

This lack of reconciliation has very real results. I’ve ministered in churches where certain members refuse to speak to others in the same pew because they voted for a different candidate. Young committed Democrats have shared with me that once they leave home they will never go to church again, “Because church isn’t safe for people like us.” A young gay man told me that “the church hates gays so I’ll never go back.” I have friends who won’t darken the door of the church because, “Everyone in church is backward, ignorant, and regressive.”

Is it any wonder so many younger people chose to opt-out of church? In a world struggling with terrorism, genocides, protests, uprisings, and inner-personal conflict, why would it make sense for anyone to opt-in to more partitioning of lives? I’m not sure about you, but I’ve got enough enmity in my life without having to sign up for the new set at church.

For that reason, the church must hold tight to the dream of “the beloved community.” Church was intended to be a place of gathering, a location where varied people join together under the proclamation that Jesus is Lord. This confession, laying aside our personal histories, political preferences, cultural impulses, and the other opportunities for opposition. God actually seems to believe that there is something for us to discover about ourselves as we sit at table with others. Perhaps the church exists to give us glimpses of the inexhaustible vastness and complexity of God. Maybe those “others” that otherwise annoy us are hints of the holy whether we like it or not. Perhaps we cannot be saved alone.

If the Scriptures are to be believed, Jesus’ cross is a collective punishment serving a collective purpose. We cannot be “one humanity” without one another.

Reconciliation, then, is not an agenda item. It’s not something we can save until next year’s budget like renovations to the narthex. Reconciliation is the demonstration that God is at work in the world. Any fool can put people at odds. Only God can bring those opposed to one another together as sisters and brothers. When we lose reconciliation, we lose Jesus. If your church is all one thing – white, black, Hispanic, gay, straight, Democrat, Republican, whatever – the Christ may have left your congregation.

Jesus, who is other (holy), came to earth to reconcile people, who are not like him to himself. The gospel was, is, and has always been about reconciliation, the “ministry of reconciliation.” And the scriptures insist we join in as full participants. Paul believes that followers of Jesus would “regard no one from a human point of view” (2 Cor. 5:16).

How is your community doing with that?

Sean Palmer: Sean is the Lead Minister at The Vine Church in Temple, TX, a community rooted in God, growing in Christ, and reaching the world. A speaker and writer, Sean blogs at The Palmer Perspective and is a contributing writer to The Voice Bible. He believes in gracious hospitality to the Other, the Atlanta Braves, and boarding flights with more books than you can read.

Just got an email from the folks behind the Children, youth and a New Kind of Christianity conference being held next month. And it was a reminder that there are only 4 weeks until this conference! If you haven’t signed up yet…it’s not too late; you can still register here. This is how they describe the conference:

This isn’t your average children’s and youth ministry conference!

Something is happening in the church. A new kind of Christianity is taking root and growing across the globe. New forms of ministry, worship, and community are emerging. Questions are being asked. And change is happening.

But amidst these changes and shifts, children and youth are being left behind. Innovative approaches to ministry with adults are emerging around the world, but little critical reflection and attention has been given to how to nurture young people within a new kind of Christianity.

In May of 2012, leaders, ministers, volunteers, parents, and students will gather in Washington, DC, USA to spark conversations about youth and children within a new kind of Christianity. They will talk about innovative practices, critical issues, and controversial topics like violence, racism, interfaith dialogue, and sexuality. They will emark on a journey together to engage in life-giving ministry with young people. And they will blaze a new trail for the 21st-century church.

After finally figuring out my hotel and flight details two weeks ago, I’m really jazzed about making it out for this conference. I’ll be flying out on Sunday (a red-eye) and getting into DC on Monday morning. I can’t wait to meet up with friends, meet new folks and listen to some phenomenal presentations and panels.

My real hope for this conference is to come back with some really helpful ideas for how to do children’s ministry in a small-church/small-town context. That is one of our struggles at our church right now, and I’m hoping to draw on the wisdom of others at this event. It’s going to be great, and I hope to see some of you there.

This post is part of an ongoing blog series on Pomomusings entitled “(Re)Imagining Christianity.” To read about the series, as well as get a full schedule of participants, click here.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that must die so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

Jewish activist and scholar, Abraham Joshua Heschel, once said that an “individual dies when they cease to be surprised.” So, to point out where death is already among us I suggest that Christianity needs to let go of the privileging rituals without addressing agency. Much of our worship does not incorporate surprise, we plan to avoid surprise or we stage a surprising happening, which separates the congregation into those “in the know” and an audience we “hope will get it.” Much of this is due to our religion’s inherited majority-cultural need to control. But today, In a world where (post)moderns are designing their most mundane parts of life with Pinterest, apps, and playlists, society is beginning to grow aware of the consequences of design decisions. We know that church how the service is supposed to go. But, if we do not allow for surprises then no new problems arise, and no new design solutions are attempted, and no new results emerge.

For example, some communities privilege preaching as a static ritual, assuming that rhetoric has never changed or developed and that context has nothing to bear on the means or goals of communicating the gospel in Christian community. Other communities privilege the Eucharist, making it a requirement for access to God’s grace, or making assent to God’s grace the requirement for access to the Eucharist. I’m not suggesting we through out the baby with the bath water and enter into a post-preaching, post-sacramental age. Instead I’m suggesting that the established church ask how the sacraments, the preaching, the singing, the gifts, the placement of their pianos function in their community’s expanding encounters with the gospel. Our rituals are imagination shapers. Like an encounter with the Apple store, with a great album like Bon Iver’s, or even a pop movie like Hunger Games, the moments we intentionally craft as organized worshipping communities tap into the aesthetic, they influence our passion, our dreams, and our everyday language.

Agency, suggests that the viewer of a story or a work of art is “in play.” Like a string on my guitar vibrates when one near it hits the right harmonic, everyone who takes place in our rituals of prayer, proclamation, response, what-have-you, rings. The church needs to bring the other players into these practices designing creative ways for all who attend to own up to their place in the gathering. When we do this it re-introduces the element of surprise, that ancient teacher that the Spirit often used to guide Gideon, Esther, Peter, Paul, and so many others.

A few years ago I spoke at a presbytery and asked them to begin with an exercise. “Share an experiment that you attempted this year that failed.” When the worship service was over this question generated the most feedback. A few were relieved to freely share with their fellow pastors the mistakes, misestimates, or surprise flops that came in spite of their planning. The majority, though, suggested I not use the word “failure” in the future, or said it was an unfair question to pose in the sensitive setting of professional colleagues. What this proved to reinforce for me was that the loss of surprise is due to our deep seated desires for those things like rightness, self-assuredness, or success. And in reaction, we plateau with replicable programs and domesticated practices.

Our Christian tradition is rich with symbols, practices, and stories, and the world around us is brimming over with more of these. I’m suggesting we invite these all to de-center us and, as Heschel writes, leave room for them to surprise us.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that we must hold onto and live out more fully so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

In Isaiah, YHWH says “Behold I am about to do a new thing, can’t you perceive it?” The flip side of the coin of domesticated precedence is surprise and emergence. We access this in a number of ways, the simplest way in for our conversation is worship gatherings.

I recently led worship in a large PC(USA) congregation and one of the associates said that they “worship in the spirit of traditionalism.” Now I’m as guilty as any at convoluting things with neologisms and mixed metaphors–but the spirit we follow is not contained in past traditions. And while reformation-era, or baroque, or mid century choral might refer to actual periods in time, traditional-ism is a static timelessness. Before I lose you I want to emphasis that the stories of God we read in the Christian scriptures do note God’s track record, and the memory of actions, “I’m the God of your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Nevertheless God is also in an expansive relationship with creation- as we sit in the here (Behold, I am with you always) and not yet (I will make all things new).

And before musicians who are critical of the three-decade-old straw man, “traditional worship,” contemporaneous worship is not necessarily any more open. I’ve had the privilege of serving five congregations in worship leadership over my years. In each of these we faced the critique of contemporary-v-traditional in different ways. But what they all shared in common were those saints (sometimes the rule, sometimes the exception) who are accustomed to a particular genre of pop music that they download or tune-in to through commercialized Christendom media channels. These anti-traditionalists can be just as stingy about their “spirit of worship.” Like most commercial media streams the CCM listener can pick out the formula after 2.5 songs, and element of surprise is programmed out.

In these cases and others like the acoustic guitar hymns or Taize or Iona, novelty makes its way into worship programming and then become static programming with certain precedents and expectations.

Those who know me know my love for the Henri Nouwen quote, “…Discipline is the act of making space where you are neither occupied [or] preoccupied… space in which God can act.” But this past year I read a complimentary quote from community facilitator, Peter Block. He talks specifically how certain gathered groups curate open space in the room where the new can emerge. He writes, “Possibility… is a declaration of what we create in the world each time we show up… For example, peace my not reign at this moment, but the possibility of peace does enter the room just because we have walked in the door. Peace here is a future not dependent on achievement… The breakthrough is that we become that possibility, and this is what is transforming.” (Community: The Structure of Belonging, p16). He continues by describing how our visions of the future are limited because we have not confronted the versions of the past that shape our identity.

Some churches are doing this well. Some song lyrics are returning to mystery, some congregations regularly write/arrange their own material, silence and labyrinths are utilized, worship curation in its multiple formats is slowly making its way from Europe and making its way into alternative gatherings. But it remains to be seen if, in an age of design consciousness, can the church ask “how does worship shape us?” and then ask the harder question, “how might we be better shaped?”

Troy Bronsink: Troy is a musician and author helping shape the worship practices of the future Church.  A Presbyterian minister and consultant with over twenty years of experience in para-church, emerging church, pastoral and worship ministry, Troy has spoken and made music with camps, conferences, schools, and congregations large and small. He currently lives with his wife and their two children in inner-city Atlanta. His album, Songs to Pray By will be released this summer, and his book, Getting Drawn In: A Creative Process for Artists, Activists, and Followers of Jesus will be released by Paraclete Press this fall.

This post is part of an ongoing blog series on Pomomusings entitled “(Re)Imagining Christianity.” To read about the series, as well as get a full schedule of participants, click here.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that we must hold onto and live out more fully so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

Like many of you, I’ve been a Christian all my life. I asked Jesus into my heart at a garage sale when I was eight years old – the ultimate bargain (yes I just went there). I recently turned 25 and have been experiencing a spiritual quarter life crisis of sorts. No longer does my faith rely on my parents or my college group, but all of a sudden it’s up to me whether or not I want to tithe or care about Joseph Kony or wake up for church on Sunday morning. It sounds cliché, but I am learning that if I really want to make a difference I need to own my own faith. Your mid-twenties are a turning point for many reasons. Right now I’m being humbled and relearning the lessons I grew up on as if I’m hearing them for the first time.

In many ways, I am.

One of these foundational thoughts I’ve been recently coming back to time and time again has been this idea of freedom in Christ. Paul tells us in Galatians that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free (Gal. 5:1a). If Christians are to live out the gospel in the next century, we must not do so stagnantly while being tied down to our jobs, busyness, even our loved ones. As the apostles left their families and careers to follow Christ, so we must set down our nets and walk truly free in Him. What does this look like for the average believer? Let’s not be crippled by the daily distractions that cloud our suburban minds (we’re all guilty of this). Prayerfully consider what God might be asking of you. Be willing and open. Do not think that because you work a 9-5 and have a comfortable life and send your children to Sunday School every week that you have attained everything – rather, be willing to give more and live less comfortably and rely on God’s providence more heavily.

I have a friend who’s taking a sabbatical, as it were, from church altogether. He’s seeking to find church in living: shooting hoops with guys at the gym, meeting informally with friends to talk about life, maybe even move to a different part of the country because he feels God calling him there. Let’s not be fooled into thinking that serving God only takes place within the four walls of our church buildings. Open yourself up to the freedom that only comes from allowing Jesus to guide your every step. It’s when you subject yourself to the most vulnerable of situations that you will feel His guidance the strongest. Make the most out of every opportunity – we were meant to live glorious lives, shining as stars for Christ, as a bright and unforgettable light on a hill.

Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Ephesians 5:14b

Laura Lawson: Laura is an artist and writer for Escape Into Life located in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was recently diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease that is slowly rendering her blind, and seeks to ignite the blind community with hope through her blog Believing Is Seeing. When she’s not painting, she can often be found eating things with Nutella on them and taking Instagram photos. Find Laura on twitter and instagram at @lauralawson or visit her website at lauralawsonart.com.

It’s important that we actively take steps to fight against the temptation to give into workaholism, and I’m sure many of you have strategies and things you’ve learned over the years. Here are some that I’m currently working on and think are important:

Take Your Day Off, Take Your Day Off, Take Your Day Off

Now, this is one that I think people struggle with the most. Taking a day off. Actually, not doing any church work for at least 1 or 2 days. But it’s so important. Luckily, I have a wife who likes to remind me that I need to take a day off. At this season in our lives, with a baby, it’s a little easier for me because Mondays are my days to watch Caleb. And so…it’s not possible for me to meet up with people, attend committee meetings or do other work-related things because I just can’t. I need to be with Caleb. So, figure out how to make it happen and then stick to it. We need time away.

When I first worked at a small church in Idaho, I would take a 1-night retreat to a monastery about once every two months. I don’t know that something like that would be possible right now, but finding time away, built-in, structured time away, is very important. Which leads me to the next one…

Go on Vacation

I think it’d be scary if we took a poll of pastors to see how much vacation time they HAVEN’T used. Most of us get pretty generous packages when it comes to time off. Our presbytery’s minimum is 4 weeks of vacation and 2 weeks of study leave (now, our idea of paternity leave is another topic that I won’t get into now). That’s 6 weeks of time away. But I wonder how often we actually use it? Now, I know it’s easy to rationalize not taking it (“I can’t find anyone to cover for me” or “Our budget doesn’t have enough to pay honorariums for other pastors to come in and preach” or “I just can’t miss that meeting…”) – but we must not do that. Take a vacation. Take a couple. Use all of your time off. Seriously. Right now. Go schedule your time off if you haven’t.

Comp Time

Since most pastors don’t work a traditional 9-5pm job, it’s easy for the work hours to add up quickly. Luckily, there are ways to avoid that, and one of those is the use of comp time. For example, we had a Session Meeting this past Tuesday night (as I’m guessing many others did). Our Session meetings can run a bit long sometimes, and so it doesn’t make any sense for me to work from 9-5pm, go home and grab a quick dinner, and then head out to a Session meeting. That can easily turn into a 12-hr work day. So, if I have evening meetings or evening programs now, I will take a portion of the afternoon off and be at home with Caleb. Sarah and I sat down, this past month, and went through the calendar and actually scheduled in chunks of time in the afternoons that I was going to be at home; it’s really helpful to actually see it on my calendar.

Have Someone Keep You Accountable

This isn’t easy to do alone – and you need someone who will keep you accountable. Maybe that is your spouse, or your colleague or a friend. It may, in many cases, be your children, who ask you why you’re going out so many nights for meetings. Whoever it is, make sure that they keep you accountable, and make sure that you listen to them.

Update: Another reason it’s helpful to have someone keep you accountable is that often we think we’re doing better at this whole thing than we actually are. For example, Sarah just woke up and read the part about me taking my days off and she promptly said, “Liar!” (which caused Caleb to start crying). As I mentioned it’s not possible for me to meet up with people, attend committee meetings, etc., because I have to physically be with Caleb…it IS still possible for me to have my face stuck in my laptop/iPad/iPhone replying to emails, doing planning, etc. So…I think I’m getting better, but I obviously have a long way to go.

Get Your Church Behind This

Finally – if the leadership of your church isn’t behind this idea…well, you’re fighting an uphill battle. Talk to your Personnel Committee, and make sure they know your priorities. Obviously, the easiest time to do this is in the interview process. If you’re hired under the assumption that you’ll be working 50-70 hours/week and available at all times for things that come up, coming in and telling the committee that you’re now aiming to work 40 hours/week might be difficult. But it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. If the committee doesn’t value your relationships with your family and your self-care…well, there may be some other problems going on as well.

What do you think about these. Do these work for you? What other steps have you taken to ensure that you don’t burnout and that you’re not working 60-70+ hours/week?

Anyone who’s worked in a church or another type of ministry before, knows that the 40 hour work week can be an ever-sought-after-but-never-attained reality. Of course, our presbyteries don’t help the matter. My presbytery, Cascades Presbytery, considers 50 hours a week to be the expected norm for a full-time work week. And as we all know, many pastors will work, 50, 60, 70+ hours as week. And we wonder why we experience clergy burnout so often?

This just isn’t healthy. It’s not right. And it doesn’t allow pastors to have lives or spend time with their families.

Landon shared a video that I’ll share below – but realize that depending on where you work, the language may not be safe for work (or home):

I think the question for so many of us in the ministry is how to get away from this model of workaholism. Now, I certainly struggle with this as much as anyone else. It’s very easy for me to come home from a full day of work at church, have dinner, and then sit on the couch with my laptop or iPad replying to church emails and doing a lot of other miscellaneous work-related tasks. I also tend to stay up after Sarah has gone to bed, because “I have more work to do…just a few things I need to take care of before I can go to bed.”

And, like we all know, there will ALWAYS be more work to do. The todo list will NEVER really be complete. And so, we have to learn how to step away from it, prioritize things in our life, and realize that there is more to our lives than our callings to be pastors. If our callings as pastors cause us to neglect and ignore our other callings and relationships in our lives, then something is messed up.

What are your thoughts on this? Why should presbyteries set a 50 hr work week as the standard expectation for pastors? Aren’t we setting up pastors and their families to fail?

In Part 2, I’ll share some thoughts on techniques that we can use to help fight against workaholism and clergy burnout.

By 2pm yesterday, I was home, laying on the couch, exhausted…and I didn’t even preach. But I had a lot of things to get ready, after a long week of preparing for Maundy Thursday/Good Friday services, and doing all of the regular things a pastor does. The Oregonian ran an article last Saturday entitled “Oregon churches prepare for rush of worshippers who surface only on Christmas and Easter.” The first paragraph of the article stated the following:

“Today, on what is arguably the most important day in the Christian year, pastors will rise and deliver the central message of their faith to a host of unfamiliar faces. Easter, like Christmas Eve, has the power to pull people through church doors they may not grace again for six months or a year.”

Having visitors and guests isn’t a problem – churches love filling the pews. And I can say that it was a joy to see our sanctuary filled up much more than usual yesterday – there was lots of energy, lots of kids and lots more people on Easter Sunday morning.

But what I want to know is…was it worth it? Was all the work and energy and planning and rehearsing and preparing worth it yesterday? Churches generally feel the need to put on a big show for special services like Easter and Christmas. But…are we doing ourselves a disservice by doing that?

We might put a lot of work into preaching a special way, or bringing in some amazing musicians, or doing some über-creative worship things, or, hey, let’s get the kids up front! And guests and visitors come, and if we’re lucky, they’re blown away by the awesomeness of everything we’ve put together for that special Easter Sunday morning…and they come back, and…? Well, it’s not the same. They see us as we are the rest of the year…are we setting high expectations for ourselves that we can’t live up to?

Now – I’m not saying we shouldn’t ever have joyful celebrations in worship. And perhaps the flip side to this is that we should strive harder to make every worship service engaging and special and a time that people would get excited about. But I think the temptation for many churches is just to make Easter or Christmas or Pentecost these amazing church services because we think maybe we’ll have visitors…but we aren’t really letting them see who we are the rest of the year. In a sense, we’re hiding our true selves, or putting a different mask on, hoping they’ll like us and come back.

Are we being authentic as worshipping communities when our Easter & Christmas services don’t look much like our services throughout the rest of the year?

This post is part of an ongoing blog series on Pomomusings entitled “(Re)Imagining Christianity.” To read about the series, as well as get a full schedule of participants, click here.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that we must hold onto and live out more fully so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

We live an age that, as tempted as I may be to define as ‘like no other,’ I find I cannot. We live an age that pits antagonistic forces against one another; these forces may (or may not) be military forces; these antagonists may (or may not) be officially sanctioned forces by any particular governing body. We watch the political parties seek out weaknesses in the opposition, that they might exploit. We watch the liberals take on the conservatives, conservative base chip away at the enclaves of liberalism. We do not just watch as passive bystanders rubber-necking an auto accident; we engage the fray, whether out there on the front lines risking arrest (or worse) or from the relative safety of our keyboards, iPads, and smartphones—oh we engage, all right. An age like no other? Hardly—An age like every other is more like it.

We live in the Burger King age that says, “If you won’t give it to me my way— I know a place that will.” And if that place does not exist, I’ll create that place/space where I can have life on my terms and bring other like-minded persons to join me in creating this space. How many times this has been replicated through history? The pilgrim’s venture to live out their days under the guise of “freedom of religion” quickly turned into “freedom of my religion” as religious persecution of those who practiced something different seemed to become the law of the land. I’m skeptical that those who desire to plant an utopian community will do little other than restack the deck in their own favor.

And yet, it’s this age, through this age, into this age that the Church as the Body of Christ seeks to live faithfully. What will it mean for this body to be faithful to the calling spirit of the Christ? What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that we must hold onto and live out more fully so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years? The ways we can honestly, truly, fully love our enemies will determine how well, how faithfully we will live out our calling as the Body of Christ.

“You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor,’ ” and we can all remember reading countless blog posts and hearing sermons too numerous to count expounding on this question, “and who is my neighbor?” We are good at loving our neighbor, and we willingly redefine who our neighbor might be to avoid leaving out anybody we are supposed to love.

“You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love you enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (Matthew 5:43-44).” In Luke’s gospel Jesus takes this a step further, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who persecute you, pray for those who abuse you (Luke 6:27-28).”

Paul, in his letter to the Romans says this, “God demonstrates divine love in this way; while we were sinners (enemies, antagonistic, persecutors, haters, nay-sayers) God reconciled us to God’s-self through the Christ event (Romans 5:8).”

The Psalmist wrote of the reality he experienced of God’s love, “ye though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me . . . You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies – my cup overflows (Psalm 23)”

Scripture seems replete with examples of what to do with and how to treat one’s enemies, yet we seem content to follow the world’s example, and either destroy them or insist they be transformed before we sit down to dinner with them. Amazing how willingly we will sit at table with those with whom we disagree, so long as we we’re able to pluck the slivers from their eyes (so long as we are able to transform them into something more like us).

So, how do we go about this ‘loving my enemies’ thing? A starting point may be with being willing to name who they are – who the antagonists, haters, those with whom we disagree; who are those who are disagreeable? Who are the ones who refuse to see life as we believe it should be seen? How do we view them? How do you view them? Do you see them as the world sees them, as mere throwaways, individuals you’re really better without? Or do you see the image in which they were created? And then how will we love? Why will we love? We love because God first loved us (while we were (and are) enemies) –

While this self-giving love may not change the behaviors of the individual, the target, the recipient, I do believe this self-giving love does hold the power to transform our relationship with one another, and ultimately deepen our relationship with, our reliance upon, our faith in the One who brings life through the most seemingly lifeless of possibilities. This is the power of the resurrection made known in the here and now.

Mike Foster: Mike pastors the First Presbyterian Church of Phoenix, Oregon. He graduated from San Francisco Theological Seminary in 2003. He is a husband, dad, son, uncle, brother, and child of God.

This post is part of an ongoing blog series on Pomomusings entitled “(Re)Imagining Christianity.” To read about the series, as well as get a full schedule of participants, click here.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that we must hold onto and live out more fully so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

If the church is going to impact the world in the next 100 years, Christians must keep reaching for the bread.

I suppose that begs for an explanation.

Last week was Communion Sunday, Palm Sunday, and April Fools Day all rolled into one, an alignment of the stars that was almost too perfect for words. This fool was not preaching the grown-up sermon, but I did have the privilege of serving as Master of Ceremonies for the children’s sermon. I say that only slightly tongue in cheek. These kids are outrageously charming. They have no shortage of ideas to share. If I ask a question, it takes everything I’ve got to reign us back in again. So while I was listening to all sorts of details about their favorite parades, some movement off to the side caught my attention.

The communion table had been set all morning, ready and waiting for the joyful feast of the people of God. A plate full of freshly baked bread was in the direct line of sight from where the children gathered on the steps. And sure enough, the action that caught my attention was one of our preschool-aged boys walking up to the table and reaching for the bread. His hands were fractions of millimeters away from their destination when an adult intervened and brought him back to the steps. The bread was protected. The boy was bummed.

I confess that for the briefest of moments, I too changed direction, intending to head off any communion faux-pas. But in the three-and-a-half steps it took me to make it that far, I realized that I was looking at the entire church in that moment. All of us, most of us hungrier than we even realize, are reaching for something when we come through those doors Sunday morning. We’re longing for something outside of ourselves, aren’t we? Even if we can’t name what it is, we must be. Otherwise, the temptation to sleep in and linger over brunch is far too tempting.

Far too often, the world gets in our way. Far too often, we get in our own way. Far, far too often, we get in someone else’s way. After the children’s sermon, when the kids all headed back to their seats, that same boy stepped back up to the table. He looked at the bread again, and thank God he reached out his hands one more time.

“Do you want to hold the bread?” I asked him, but his shyness got the better of him, and he hurried back to his mother.

We must keep reaching for the bread. Over and over, no matter how many times it takes. We must keep reaching for the bread, and we sure better share it once we’ve got it. There are simply too many hurts to be healed, too many injustices to be righted, too many prayers to be said, too many hungers to be filled, too many tears to be dried, for us to keep our hands to ourselves any longer.

The kingdom of God is at hand. The bread of life is all around us. Sometimes I worry that we’re waiting around, a little bit too “decently and in order,” a little bit too content for the ushers to invite us forward at the appointed time and not one moment sooner.

My prayer for us all is that we’ll be a little bit more like that little boy, taking matters into our own (spirit-filled) hands. “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” the psalmist invites us. What are we waiting for?

Jenny McDevitt: Jenny is a pastor in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Yes, this means she lives about five minutes from the beach. (Hey, someone’s gotta do it.) She runs slowly, reads just about anything, and cooks as little as possible.

This post is part of an ongoing blog series on Pomomusings entitled “(Re)Imagining Christianity.” To read about the series, as well as get a full schedule of participants, click here.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that must die so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

A lot needs to change for Christianity to continue to impact the world in positive ways, but one that stands out for me is the anchoring of worship, spiritual enrichment, formation, and service in the physical church building. Of course, lots of Christians are doing lots of amazing, healing things all over the world, but these practices are rarely integrated into local church practice other than as a periodic program (e.g., youth mission trips, monthly homeless shelter dinners) that happens outside of worship. This makes the engaged spirituality of Christians largely invisible in the wider world and separates it from the normative practice of faith.

The effects of this on in both in our churches and in the wider culture are powerful. In the latter case, people see and hear all kinds of name-calling and condemnation by people who call themselves “Christian” in popular media. But they rarely see, either through media or in other everyday spaces, self-identified Christians acting out of the obligations of discipleship—radical love of neighbor, care for those in any kind of trouble or need—in local communities. Indeed, sociologist Paul Lichterman has shown that Christians—especially moderate to progressive ones—have difficulty communicating religious identity in public spaces even as they are doing work motivated by their faith commitments.

This creates perception that “Christian compassion” is more of an event (a hurricane fundraiser here, a soup supper there) than a life practice. It’s not difficult for people to come to the conclusion that Christianity is, at best, an antique approach to personal spiritual enrichment and, at worst, a disengaged, exclusivist social group that periodically attempts to repair its public image by engaging in acts of service while wearing modest church t-shirts.

Yet my concern has to do with much more than the perhaps irredeemably tarnished images of Christians and our Church in the wider world. I’m not concerned about better marketing. I’m concerned that people in our own communities—especially kids—don’t understand Christianity as a holistic life practice—as a way of being that informs every part of our lives. When the practice of faith is seen as located primarily in church buildings, it becomes functionally invisible and more or less irrelevant in the larger portions of our lives that take place outside of the Sunday service.

Now, there are lots of ministries that are beginning to address this issue. In my new book with Lutheran pastor Keith Anderson, Click 2 Save: The Digital Ministry Bible, we profile ministry leaders across the country who have moved ministry well beyond the walls of the local church to be present where people are throughout their lives—Adam Copeland at Project F-M in North Dakota, Jodi Bjornstad Houge at Humble Walk in Minnesota, Emily Scott at St. Lydia’s Dinner Church in New York among them—including in the digital communities growing across the internet. Likewise, the Worship in the Wilderness hiking liturgies Jon Anderson began several years ago in New Mexico have found their way to Northern California and elsewhere.

These are all great starts, the effects of which have been amplified to a certain extent in the past year by the participation of mainline churches with other religious and spiritual groups and individuals in the Occupy Wall Street movement. But so long as these ministries continue to be seen as experimental, as provisional, as adjunct to “real worship” in the “real church,” their significance and real transformative power will be diminished, if not lost entirely. These are among the creative, mobile, engaged expressions of church that simply must become normative practice if the church is to continue in its mission of serving God’s people, showing them the nearness of the Kingdom, in the decades ahead. While we need not necessarily close the doors on our church buildings and other property, we do need to shift them from being the centers of our worship and service to being resources that support more widely distributed ministry in our local communities and global networks.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that we must hold onto and live out more fully so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

Given all the great needs of the world—feeding the hungry, tending the sick, caring for those otherwise in trouble or need—a spiritual practice like regular, shared prayer might not seem like the most important thing we could be doing as Christians to impact the world. But I believe that it is.

Taking time to acknowledge the presence of God that is always with us and offering our lives—our joys, our hopes, our needs, our sorrows—into that presence is at the very core of the faith embodied by Jesus. Again and again, Jesus steps away from the active work of healing the sick, comforting the downtrodden, advocating for the poor, and speaking sacred truth to power in order to pray. Our focus in Matthew 14 tends, understandably, to be the miraculous feeding of the five thousand and Jesus’s walk across the Sea of Galilee. But the pivot in the chapter between Jesus’ miraculous abundance and Peter’s fearful doubt, is prayer: “And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain himself to pray” (14:23).

In Mark, likewise, prayer is the hinge between one miracle and another. The healings in Capernaum (Mark 1:21-34) and throughout the Galilee are punctuated with prayer: “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35).

I could go on, of course, what with the Gospels serving as pretty much as a guide to prayer. (See, e.g., Matthew 6:5-15, 19:13-15; 26:38-39; 26:42; Mark 14:32-33; Luke 5:15-16, 6:12-13, 9:28-29, 11:1-4, 24:50-51; John 11:41-42, 17:1.) Indeed, Jesus final human words are a prayer: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46).

The thing I try to remind myself—especially as I’m railing about how we need to move out of the church more, to be among all God’s people more, to practice an activist faith over one defined by self-indulgent spiritual enrichment—is that prayer is the key to discipleship. It is the one practice available to every believer and seeker at every moment, regardless of what technology is at hand. Prayer makes clear that we live out of relationship to God—that our service is not just goodhearted charity, but work we are called to by a loving, compassionate God who has invited us into an enduring divine-human partnership.

“Up up up up up points the spire of the steeple, but God’s work isn’t done by God, it’s done by people,” begins one of my favorite Ani DiFranco songs. Well, yes. But, as Christians, we believe that the work we do in God’s name is ultimately made possible by God, not by people. Prayer is the practice of remembering this basic Christian truth. Without it, we can do much good, but we give up the source of our passion, courage, and strength.

Elizabeth Drescher, PhD: Elizabeth is the author of Tweet If You ♥ Jesus: Practicing Church in the Digital Reformation (Morehouse, 2011) and, with Keith Anderson, of Click 2 Save: The Digital Ministry Bible. She is on the faculty of the Graduate Program in Pastoral Ministries at Santa Clara University. Her website is www.elizabethdrescher.net.

Next month, May 19th, I’m going to be in the Boise area (Nampa, specifically) for a day to lead a Social Phonics Social Media Boot Camp. If you’re not familiar with these boot camps, check out this page for more information. If you know anyone who’s in ministry or leading a non-profit, because they could probably benefit from this 1-day intensive workshop.

Over the course of the day, we’ll talk about creating a social media philosophy, and spend time working with Facebook, Twitter, blogging, broadcast media and a whole lot more. No matter your skill level in the social media world, you’ll come away having learned something that you can go back and use in your ministry or non-profit work. The details are below:

Saturday, May 19 9am – 4pm  • $125
Northwest Nazarene University
Wordsworth Meeting Room in the Student Center
623 South University Boulevard
Nampa, Idaho 83686
Register here (registration is limited to 50 participants)
More info here on the Facebook event 

This post is part of an ongoing blog series on Pomomusings entitled “(Re)Imagining Christianity.” To read about the series, as well as get a full schedule of participants, click here.

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that must die so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

What is one belief, practice or element of Christianity that we must hold onto and live out more fully so that Christianity can move forward and truly impact the world in the next 100 years?

Young people are doubting alone. According to a recent study by Fuller Seminary, 70% of Christian young people doubt their faith, but only a small number of them will ever talk to anyone about those doubts.

As we face the future, what we must embrace is that the Christian community is uniquely equipped to engage doubt. What must die is doubting alone.

My thoughts on the matter of doubt largely derive from empirical and theological research conducted during my doctoral work at Princeton Seminary. During that project I listened intently to young adults’ experiences of doubt and faith amidst the landscape of American Christianity. Among the findings of that project are two that I believe are particularly helpful for the matter at hand: (1) Doubt is traumatic; (2) Most churches force people to doubt alone.

Doubting Alone

Nearly all the participants in my study confirmed that congregations do a lousy job walking with young people who doubt. When I asked young adults about their experiences doubting in childhood and adolescence, two common and yet (apparently) polar opposite ecclesial responses emerged—pushing away and embrace.

On the one hand, some young adults reported they had been pushed away from their congregations on account of their doubts. The congregation held them at arm’s length, and some had been treated as if their doubt was a disease that might infect the rest of the congregation or youth group. Several were told, “We’ll be praying for you,” but they had largely been uninvited from participation in the life of the church until they got their “issues” worked out.

On the other hand, some young adults reported that they had been embraced by their congregations on account of their doubts. Many were told that doubt is a “stage” that people go through that can be beneficial for faith, and they were assured that “everyone doubts.” Then they were invited to have coffee and a donut in the fellowship hall and to not worry about doubt.

Though they appear to be polar opposites, both of these responses have the same problem. Neither response treats doubt as an issue to be addressed robustly by the congregation, but rather an issue to be confronted by the individual in the depths of her psyche, intellect, or soul. The church of embrace affords a warm place for the individual who doubts. The church that pushes away provides a place for the individual to return when doubting is finished. Neither church seems to have the perspective that the congregation is responsible for the faith development of the person who doubts.

Engaging Doubt

While both the pushing away response and the embrace response leave people doubting alone, I believe there is a possibility for a third response (engaging doubt) that is grounded in Scripture, Christian tradition, and theological reflection.

To begin to get a grasp on what I mean by engaging doubt, three distinct but related definitions of “engage” are probably helpful at this point. First, in any activity, to engage means to find an active role and place of participation. We can play differing roles, but engaging requires some sort of activity. Second, to get my 1996 Toyota Camry moving I take the transmission out of neutral and engage the gears by joining, uniting and intermeshing them together. Engaging requires moving together. Third, to engage also means to promise, commit oneself, and to enter a covenant. It’s why we speak of couples that are planning and promising to be married as “engaged.”

If we put these various definitions together, a rough picture begins to emerge of what I mean by engaging the doubts of young people. It means to join together and walk alongside someone through his doubts and questions. It means joining together and seeking understanding one with another. It means to enter into a relationship that is not in danger of being severed by the questions, doubts, unbelief, or doctrinal heresies of either partner.

Engagement, then, is distinct from the common ecclesial response of mere embrace. It’s fashionable to be a church that embraces doubt from the pulpit once or twice a year, or sponsors a Sunday “doubt” series in which you make bland statements such as, “It’s okay, everybody doubts” or “Doubt is an aspect of faith.” These statements aren’t false, but neither do they alone actually help the person grow through faith and doubt.

I know of a youth ministry that has a “doubt box” into which teenagers anonymously drop their doubts and questions on 3×5 cards. Every few weeks the youth pastor opens the doubt box, pulls out a card, and then spends 20 minutes giving what she calls “serious answers to serious questions” about Darwinian evolution, the resurrection, the existence of heaven or hell, and so forth. That’s not what I mean by engagement, because the serious questions of young people require far more than just serious answers. When we understand doubt as merely intellectual, we fundamentally misunderstand doubt.

Doubt is Traumatic

I promised you a second pertinent finding from the research I conducted, and here it is: Doubt is traumatic. Every participant in my study described doubt as an experience that produced fear, anxiety, or insecurity. For many of them the onset of religious doubt was a personal crisis in which they did not just doubt God, but in fact doubted their very story and identity. Why? When a person who has been immersed in faith doubts, she doubts the very narrative and worldview through which she has come to understand the meaning of her world — and herself. The trauma of doubt is that it has the potential of not just calling God into question, but one’s whole world and one’s self. In reality, the proper response to doubt might be pastoral care rather than mere apologetics.

This is why we need a community that will engage us in our doubts. Most young people in the throes of religious doubt do not merely need an intellectual answer from page 132 of Case for Christ; rather, they need people who will come alongside them and listen to their doubts, ask questions, share their own doubts in faith, and walk with them through wrestling with doubts that threaten to undo their whole world.

While some have advocated for the necessity of reason and logic and others for mystical experience in ministering to people who doubt, I would argue that both are helpful — but only within the community of engagement.

The Community of Engagement

When we read John chapter 20 we usually focus our attention on “doubting Thomas” when in actuality we might do well to focus on the actions of the community of Jesus. What’s striking about this passage is that Thomas doubts, but a week later he’s still hanging out with the disciples in the upper room. Think about that. Thomas doesn’t just doubt the resurrection of Jesus, the distilled doctrine of the church, or what has been passed along by people he doesn’t know. Rather, he doubts the eyewitness testimony of his friends and compatriots. In light of that, it should tell us something significant about the community by the fact that Thomas is still present with them a week later. Thomas was not consigned to doubting alone, but he voiced his doubts and had them answered in the midst of the worshipping community. The role of the disciples was to provide a place for Thomas to both express doubt and to encounter Jesus. Should it not be the same today?

I find it unfortunate that when we gather today in our sanctuaries and upper rooms we create what theologian Douglas John Hall has called the “most dishonest hour in America” by suppressing the doubts and questions that we all bring under a veneer of smiley worship. As one of the young men in my research stated, “We ignore doubt in the services because it doesn’t fit with the motif.”

Whether it’s the motif, or our fears of messiness and complexity, we’ve all but banished uncertainty, lament and the hiddenness of God from our corporate gatherings. Despite the fact that a sizeable number of the Psalms involve lament and questioning, we tend to ignore them. Even more, we completely ignore the tradition of lament as an appropriate form of corporate worship.

Likewise, we affirm the doctrine of revelation, and yet forget that this doctrine concerned with the knowledge of God is equally concerned with the hiddenness of God. As Christians, we affirm that all we know about God is what God has revealed. We do not know everything. This means, says Hall, that Christianity is by nature a faith that requires us to doubt on at least some points. The Christian faith does not consist of absolute certainty but proper confidence. We must hold our theology loosely, because, as I tell my students, if you believe your theology is 100% correct you’re no longer a theologian but an idolater.

Despite biblical precedent, the tradition of lament, and our theological understandings, rarely do our churches operate as communities in which doubts are engaged and discussed openly. I believe we must change this and determine ways in which to engage doubt corporately and in one-on-one relationships. Instead of ignoring doubts, giving them lip service, or shoving apologetic books in people’s faces, I think it’s high time that we begin seeking understanding as we read, think, discuss and listen— together. Only then will we move beyond allowing young people to doubt alone.

Practically, my research has led me to think about engaging the doubts of young people in 8 distinct ways. While there is not space to explore each of them in detail (as I’m hoping to do in a future book), I will explain each of them briefly:

1. Preparing people for doubt: My research revealed that it’s not uncommon for young people to think they can’t worship if they doubt. They need to be readied for the fact that doubts will come, and that faith is not contrary to doubt.
2. Surfacing doubts: Sometimes young people are doubting without realizing it. We can help them articulate these doubts through questions such as, “What do you not know about God?” or, “How have your conceptions of God been disappointed?”
3. Expressing doubts: Use music, art, poetry or other creative expression to help young people express the anxiety and fear that often accompanies doubt.
4. Discussing reasons for doubts: Asking young people to give reasons for what they believe and what they doubt allows them to gain clarity and think through the state of their faith.
5. Incorporation of doubt in worship: Using corporate prayers of lament or “creeds” that express what we do not know about God allow young people to experience that worship and doubt are not opposed.
6. Creating disorienting dilemmas: Bringing youth to struggle with faith in an environment of challenge and support that will help them work through their faith by putting forth substantive issues, not “straw man” arguments.
7. Testifying to faith in doubt: Encouraging young people to state both what they believe but also to discuss how they currently are doubting and questioning.
8. Seeking understanding together: This functions similarly to Brian McLaren’s concept of spiritual friendship based upon open discussion and searching for truth (See, More Ready Than You Realize, by Brian McLaren.)

Far from blithely embracing those who doubt, or pushing them away, the proper form of the church is a community that engages young people who doubt — and which refuses to let them doubt alone.

Andrew Zirschky: Andrew Zirschky is academic director at the Center for Youth Ministry Training in Nashville and teaches youth ministry and practical theology at Memphis Theological Seminary. He is completing a Ph.D. in practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He’s known Adam Cleaveland longer than any other (Re)Imagining Christianity author (since 2001) and will share incriminating stories about him for a small fee.