Christmas Holiday

Hey all…

I’ll be pretty swamped over Christmas so I’ll be taking a break from writing posts until the New Year. See you in again 2010.

Wishing you all an amazing holiday season.

Much love.

Sean.

Remembering History

I’ve just finished watching a new HBO series called “John Adams”, about the life and times of America’s second President. It follows his rise from local Boston lawyer, to signer of the Declaration of Independence, to Ambassador to France, Vice President to George Washington, and eventually to becoming the President of the newly constituted United States. It’s a period history I never really delved into. I knew the basics, but never had a sense of the story.

What struck me most, when watching this series, was the justice of their cause in desiring to throw off the shackles of British oppression. Figures like Adams, Franklin, Washington and Jefferson were banding together to forge a new path for this outpost of the British Empire. They were no longer happy to remain under England’s boot and they were willing to risk it all to be free men. I listened with new respect to snippets read from the Declaration of Independence, a document written in the midst of a war they were not sure they could even win. But their cause was right, and their motives were true. They wanted liberty from a monarchy who were taking advantage of them and a right to govern themselves.

Globally, we hear American’s using phrases like ‘the fight for liberty’, ‘the right to freedom’, and ‘the American dream’, and we all get a bit cynical about it, but at the moment of their conception, these were all good and beautiful things, things which I admire. I confess I have been one of the cynics of America’s modern outworking of these grand ideals. Much of the way they move in the world doesn’t feel much like the ‘pursuit of liberty’ and ‘justice for all’. I think at every point in her journey it would help America to return to her beginnings and ask herself what she stood for, and does she still stand for them same good, or has she begun to lose her way? Not only in her own eyes, but in the eyes of the world. Otherwise she only betrays the memory of those who risked it all to see her birth.

As I was watching this series the parallel with the church seems unavoidable.

You see the last few weeks I have been on a bit of mission.

I’m reading through all of Paul’s letters, and I’m making sure that I do it in one sitting each, actually trying to read them like letters, without stopping to over think those phrases I’ve heard preached so often, without paying any attention to verse or chapter structure (something which was added much later), all so I can get a sense of how the guys first listening would have heard them. I’ve made sure I’ve done some reading about the time and places he wrote to as well, and then I’m reading alongside Acts to try and get a sense of the story of his journeys.

I’m also deliberately reading through them in the order they were most likely written rather than the order we have them in the bible. They didn’t have the most sophisticated system when they ordered the canon of scripture: they just placed the author’s books from longest to shortest. They did the same with 1, 2, and 3 John, and 1 and 2 Peter. I also think that reading them in chronological order helps you get a sense of Paul’s evolving theology.

So far, it’s been an enlightening exercise. To say that I feel as if I’m reading this stuff for the first time is not too strongly put, and I’ve read this stuff loads of times. I keep coming across passages I know by heart, but read in context I get the feeling that I had the meaning wrong all along.

There really are so many examples, but maybe I’ll just give you one for now:

One of the things which stand out the most are that Paul was not trying to build a new religious establishment. Anything but. We blame Paul for institutionalizing our church, and often point to his writings to back up the ways we do stuff, but it just isn’t in there, and on the rare occasions there is some practical advice ‘how to be church’ we completely misunderstand what he’s saying, because we read it like a manual, instead of a letter to a very specific group of people, with very specific problems.

In the details Paul was trying to undo the heavy religious obligations of the Jews. He is establishing communities who are continuations of the Jewish story, but who lie outside of the bounds of their heavy religion. You have to grasp how radical what Paul was doing was. Some have even accused him of being anti-Semitic… and he was Jewish! But he is so keen to form these simple communities that follow the way of Jesus that he gets passionately angry every time he hears about Jews who are going around trying to bring that ‘institutional religion’ and force it on the fledgling churches he’s planted. At one point he’s so enraged he even wishes they would cut their own willies’ off! (Galatians 5:11-12) Not very christian:) But this is how keen Paul is to keep this new movement from getting bogged down in legalism. He’s not anti-Jewish, he’s anti ‘oppressive institution’.

We are reading his letters wrong if we think we can back up our institutionalization of church with his writings.

I have a feeling if he was writing letters today in our context, he would often speak of us in the same way he spoke of the Jews: as those who constrain the freedom Christ has brought, as those who are bringing a new law for people to be yoked under, as those who have forgotten the global reach of God’s mission by becoming elitist.

This is just one example of the way we misread him, but there are tons of others.

I really do believe that everyone can and should read the scriptures. I don’t believe you need a theological degree to read them well. But I do believe that you need to know your history to read them well. I know that takes energy, but I think it’s worth it if we really want to know what’s being said. The problem is that many don’t really want to know; they just want simple answers so they can stop thinking about it. It’s one of our church era’s greatest downfalls: that we have vilified the intellect. Apparently, ‘take it on faith’ is a pseudonym for ‘just believe the simplest, most literal reading, and get back to your day’. But I think if you just drag the text kicking and screaming into our context to be applied literally, that’s a very ugly kind of fundamentalism which, has spawned some of our most shameful mistakes as church.

So my advice is to grab some history books, or at least start by opening wikipedia every once in a while. Read about the Jews and their first century culture. Read about the Greek influences in the thinking of first century people. Read about the Roman Empire and how they dominated the Mediterranean world at the time. If you get a picture of all these elements you will start to get a better picture of how the church started and what it stood for in it’s day, and the more we get that sense the more we will also be able to see where we are betraying our founders by making church about things it was never meant to be about. It cheapens everything those early apostles did if we merely twist their words to support our own church organizations. What did they stand for and do we still stand for the same in our time?

Do we stand for freedom from law and legalism, or are we creating a new rules all the time?

Do we stand for acceptance and open access to God, or are we building a new form of priesthood?

Do we stand for a new reality that offers peace, hope and love, or does the rest of planet avoid us because of our judgmental, condescending attitude?

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record; we have to be brave enough to read our history and ask the tough questions about ourselves and how we move in the world.

To coin a cliche; ‘we ignore history at our peril’.

The Good Stuff

A few of us have been chatting and decided that sometime early in the new year we’re going to organize a meal where a bunch of people, who are interested, can get together to chat about how we can ‘do church’. The idea is to see what it would look without some of the ‘institutional clutter’ I’ve been speaking about in this blog; to take some of the very simple ideas around spiritual community found in scripture, and just see if we can live those out together without bringing our denominational jots and tittles. I have a feeling that the way forward for the church, the world over, begins with us laying down our religious baggage and banding together around some very simple ideas.

So this is a nod in that direction.

We’ll obviously have this meet up here in Cape Town and it’s open to anyone whose interested, and can make it. If you want to be included in this ‘supper/ get together’ thing, find me on Facebook (click the FB link in the side bar) and just message me asking to be added to the event invite. It will probably be a ‘bring and braai’ of some kind. You’re obviously welcome to pass this invite on if you know anyone else who would be interested.

The idea of the evening will just be to meet each other, have some munchies and an informal chat about what ‘church’ could look like if we stripped it down to the good stuff. I think one of my fears about starting some kind of house church/ simple church, is that we would have so many different expectations represented that, to keep everyone happy, we could just end up forming a kind of cumbersome collective, which is trying to be too many things all at once. That is exactly the opposite of my intent. I hope that we can strip it all down to the bare essentials.

So what is the ‘good stuff’?

In an attempt to work some of this out for myself, I pulled out something I put together for my last church. We were trying to come up with an idea of what our little evening service community should be about. This seems like as good a place as any to start:

1. Reviving People
We value the acceptance and restoration of all people through Jesus. We believe in the healing of relationship with God, others, self and creation. We believe in the confronting of fears, the acknowledgment of past failures and the mending of brokenness. We believe in restoring the whole person; body, mind and soul. We believe in sharing in the work of God in the lives of others by coaching individuals in the spiritual life. We believe in moving people from brokenness to wholeness, from apathy to active participation in all of life with God.

2. Recreating Community
We believe in the importance of community as we follow God together. We believe our interactions with each other should express God’s unconditional and sacrificial love. We believe in mutual support through the carrying of each others burdens, the sharing of resources, and the deep living of life together in both suffering and celebration. We believe that each individual has the responsibility to use their strengths and gifts to build a healthy, holistic community. We believe that this community exists, not in isolation, or for our own sake, but as part of the global community of Christ-followers.

3. Restoring the World
We believe that God’s mission is to restore all things. We believe that as we grow to know the heart of God and what matters to Him, it should move us to action in joining this mission. We believe in communicating the message of Jesus in order to call others to follow Him. We believe in the restoration of creation and the environment, the relief of suffering for the oppressed, and creative opposition to injustice wherever we see it. We believe in being agents of peace to all humanity, and a compelling force for good in the world as we join in God’s mission, both locally and abroad, in reclaiming all things.

Maybe you would like to add something you think I have missed out. Leave me a comment.

Disconnection

 

I’ve been challenged by many recently to start a ‘home church’ so as to put some of this stuff into practice in community; you know, put flesh on it so to speak. To be honest, I don’t think I’m ready to lead something at this point, but it has got me thinking about how I would do it. What are the important things? What is ‘community that works’? Because if we’re honest; we’re not very good at it really, and as far as I can see it’s mostly because of the society we’re living in. So the question is, ‘how would we make sure that we lived in community well?’

We are incredbily disconnected from one another in modern culture and there are just so many obstacles in people’s mind which need to fall away before community happens, most of which we don’t even see. We’ve fallen into such bad patterns of relating which carve our realities up.

You have the guys who only feel like they are only living meaningful community when they are hanging out with “The Guys!” There can be a similar dynamic among women as well, and this often makes community across genders awkward. One of the young adult groups I worked with was split right down the middle on gender lines, and to get the two halves to socialize together was like drawing blood.

Married couples have a habit of only wanting to socialize with other married couples, “otherwise it’s awkward”. Then when they have kids they have to find couples with kids to hang out with, leaving a wake of discarded friendships behind them, and this is seen as the way things should be, but it’s really hard to form communities with this kind of thinking. Not to mention, it hurts a lot of people.

We don’t seem to be very good at naturally forming community across cultural lines either, but will stick very much to our own kind. This is obviously a historical problem, but one which needs to be deliberately dismantled with some brave choices.

We form any number of cliques which keep us safe in our little groups, especially here in Cape Town. Everyone moans, coming to this city, that to make friends is impossible because no one will let them in to their little social groups. I got a glimpse of this a few weeks ago when I was invited to dinner with a friend who was going out with a bunch of his friends. He shared with me afterwards that there was some reluctance on his girlfriend’s part, because they weren’t sure how Sarah (my girlfriend) and I would “fit in”. We actually had a great evening and met some new people, but I got the distinct impression that this was a new thing for this lot:”meeting new people”. How sad.

We have become so selfish and isolated. As I understand it, community is meant to be about sacrificing for others, but we seem to be of the mindset that community exists to provide me with a place to hang out in my schedule gaps. That’s just not a biblical idea.

Check this out in Romans 12: 9-16. This is in the midst of Paul talking to the church in Rome about being community:

“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.”

We don’t do this stuff well any more, and we don’t seem to care. My worry is that our western, capitalist, every-man-for-himself mentality creeps in and strangles out the good stuff. We are so reserved with our connections, so careful with our compassion, so boundary obsessed.

Much of it is due to our modern culture. Throughout most of history people have lived in large groups, extended families, as mutually dependent village-dwellers. In a setting like this, a group forming a clique, thinking they were better than anyone else, would have been taken down a peg or two. A couple who got married and closed themselves into their own house, refusing to interact but once a fortnight, would have been frowned upon. But today this stuff is all normative. We schedule our ‘community’ in our free time, which, lets be honest, is a ‘social life’ rather than real community. It’s selfish convenience, not sacrifice.

And the people we’re hurting in the long run are ourselves. Your clique will break up because life moves people on, and then you’ll be alone because no one else will let you into theirs. You will realise that you aren’t meant to shut yourself in with your spouse, but by the time you understand that you still need community, all your friends will be weary of you casting them off again. And in our ever-globalizing world you will soon be surrounded by people who don’t share your culture, and then what will you do (Clint Eastwood’s latest offering, ‘Gran Tarino’, deals with this really poignantly)?

Church should be a place where we live in reckless, giving community with one another; community that doesn’t serve us selfishly, but actually costs us. We are supposed to be an antithetical force showing the world a better way to live, and we are all better human beings when we are in the context of healthy community. We should be ‘love’ and ‘care’ in the midst of a selfish, individualistic culture.

Community is also about the quality of our connection. It isn’t just my group of friends who I go to movies with, or have dinner parties with. Community really gets going when things go wrong for people. Then you know whether or not you have community around you, or just a fair weather, social group.

A while back, everything was coming unravelled for me. I had troubles with the church I was working at. The romantic relationship I was involved with was wheezing it’s last after some very painful revelations. I was totally disillusioned with life. But thankfully I had some people around me who were ready to be real community!

They sat with me for hours while I worked through my pain over the previous months. They held me as my simple view of love and relationships fell apart. They listened as I vented about my shattered view of ‘church’. They didn’t have answers or solutions, but then there weren’t any really. When they felt I was getting too sulky they dragged me off to the beach, or on some random mission to get my mind off things. They may not have known how to deal with my problems, but they took care of me while I tried to work it out.

We all crave this kind of care; to know there are people out there who have ‘I’ve-got-your-back love!’ for us. Human  beings need this, otherwise the world is a very scary place.

This is why, if I ever do start a “house church” of some kind, I want to make sure that we are ‘real community’ with each other. That people matter! Just look at Jesus. He picked a handful of guys and then spent His time pouring wisdom into them, and not in an ‘I’m teaching you’ kind of way, but in an ‘I’m genuinely interested in you’ kind of way. He spent His waking moments with this group, living life with them in the most real ways. They walked many miles where He just spoke about God, the way the world works, and everything in between. Most of it we don’t have recorded, but it must have been good stuff because it soon drew crowds of people also wanting to follow. He loved and cared for any and everyone who came, from beggars to prostitutes, from zealots to tax collectors. No man, woman or child was ignored.

Remember: when Jesus broke it down, he said that the only two things that count are ‘Loving God’ and ‘Loving People’.

So, in practical terms our churches should be places where we are being community to one another, in tangible ways.

Someone is separating from their spouse, we should be taking them for a drink, giving them a place to stay, a shoulder to cry on.

Someone is unemployed, we should be inviting them into our house while they get back on their feet.

Someone is lonely, we should be spending time with them, even if it isn’t ‘cool’ or convenient.

Someone is heartbroken, we should be giving our time to let them vent at the ceiling about how cruel life is, then holding them as they try to make sense of the pain.

Someone needs something, we should give it to them, even if it costs us… no, especially if it costs us!

 

Psychological Armor

 

I used to have a good friend at Theological College named Chris. He was a super-intelligent guy with an amazing ability to see through the crap. We met together once a week, for a good year,  connecting over our common angst about where the church was at. We spent many Monday nights, often chatting way into early Tuesday morning about the things that were close to the heart of the modern church, about God’s heart to rescue the world, and the frequent distance between the two.

He never did become a Pastor. He choose instead to help abandoned handicapped kids in rural communities in KZN, which I suppose feels a lot more like rescuing the world with God than many of the things he may have ended up doing.

One of the phrases Chris often used has stuck with me. He spoke about ‘Psychological Armor’, which was his eloquent way of describing those learned thought processes which keep people from hearing.

Psychological armor are the little lines we commit to memory which allow us to dismiss questions posed to us, which we don’t really know the answer to. Like medieval knights putting on their suits of armor plate by plate, we build a series of simple learned answers, gleaned from sermons over the years, which will block any questions asked of us. It releases us from actually having to think about the answers, and the things we may have to change. Most people don’t even know they do it, but it’s painfully obvious to the rest of the world.

Even Freud said in his day, “The church trains it’s young people to only ask the questions it can answer.”

To help this along most churches attempt to vilify the intellect. It’s even set up as an enemy to faith, as if to think about our faith is not to trust it. Pastors stand in pulpits all over the world encouraging their congregants to, ‘stop trying to work God out, because He’s just too big, just accept Him by faith’. Obviously that sounds good, and is true to an extent, but allow me to translate what is actually being said: ‘Stop thinking too much, just believe what I tell you about Him’.

Sound too harsh?

I actually had a lecturer at Theological College pull me out of class for questioning his interpretation on a passage. He was speaking through one of Paul’s letters, trying to explain why it clearly said that women with short hair should wear a shawl to church, and women with long hair didn’t have to. I smelt blood in the water and went in for the kill in my typical ‘bull in a china shop’ fashion. The lecturer didn’t like being challenged, so he cut me short and asked me step outside so he could have a word with me. We walked out into the corridor where he told me that I was ungrateful! He explained that, ‘in his day he was grateful for the wisdom passed on to him by wiser men, and would never dare to question’.

Still sound too harsh?

It’s always been one of my biggest frustrations in any church I have worked in, is how few Christians ‘own’ their own faith. How many have read for themselves, tried to discover for themselves? How many are brave enough to stand by what they read in scripture when the Pastor says something different? In many ways it’s like we’re back in the Middle Ages. The priest would read the latin text to the uneducated masses, and then because they didn’t understand Latin he would ‘tell them what it meant’. The difference is, we have no excuse: we CAN read for ourselves, and we do have our own connection with God. Yet we seem happy to just build our suit of armor and probe no further.

We’re lazy!

I had another friend get hold of me the other day after reading this blog. He also trained to be a Pastor at about the same time I did; different college, but same denomination. He now works with AIDS patients. His comment to me was, “Why are you bothering? No one will listen to you, and even if they do, they certainly won’t hear you!”

Interesting choice of words.

One of my mentors (who used to be a priest, but has now left the church to form a small organic community) said to me the other day that he thinks I should just give this up because it’s all doomed to collapse. No one will listen. Fear of change, pride and ignorance will keep many churches safe until the day they fall apart.

In many ways the institution equips you with the psychological armor you need to keep itself safe. You are told it’s about faith, just accept what we tell you. It’s about the heart, not the head. You are discouraged from finding out for yourself, discouraged from reading your own history, told not to worry about more complex theology… you are given a simple set of things to do and think, and told not to worry about the rest.

I think this is what Paul would call still ‘being stuck on milk’.

Time to move on to meat!

Speaking of Paul…

There is this great phrase Paul uses when recounting his conversion to King Agrippa in Acts 26… He says the voice of God said to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Why do you kick against the goads?” What the hell is a ‘goad’? Well, it’s a farming metaphor, a plowing metaphor actually. You would hook your oxen up to the plow and the goad was a pointed stick used to both keep the oxen in line and move them forward. If the oxen resisted the goad and ended up kicking it, they would only hurt themselves.

In Paul’s case you can easily see why God would use this idea. Paul was a good Jew, a good Pharisee, who was trying to root out this heretical sect of ‘Jesus followers’. But on his way to complete one of his murderous missions God throws him from his horse and accuses him of ‘kicking against the goads’. God is actually the one moving things on and Paul couldn’t see it. Jesus IS actually the Messiah that all good Jews, like Paul, have been waiting for, but the institution has blinded Paul from seeing the truth by giving him psychological armor. God has to literally throw him to the ground and blind him to get him to see that he is holding up what God is doing.

I think God is always moving things on. Unfortunately, the institution’s priority is usually to keep things the same. Now I don’t think we’re in for a big shake up like with Paul’s day. Things aren’t about to take a completely different direction, but we do need to make some major changes to get back on track and to influence the world like the followers of Christ should. The psychological armor we are given to wear helps us ‘kick against the goads’ and prevents us from seeing the ways God is trying to move us forward.

I sometimes go back through these posts and wonder how many of you who read them actually hear what I’m on about. I can sometimes hear the reinterpretation of my words as you fit them into your mould, and then quickly disqualify them. I just look at some of the comments made and think, ‘you haven’t heard me at all, and any debate is a waste of time’. My sadness isn’t that you disagree with me; I’m pretty secure in where God is leading, even if many would disagree. My sadness is how blinded so many are by their narrow church context. Jesus and the prophets spoke again and again about this idea of blindness and deafness. Check this out in Isaiah 6:9-10:

“He said, “Go and tell this people:

“Be ever hearing, but never understanding;

Be ever seeing, but never perceiving.

Make the heart of this people calloused;

make their ears dull and close their eyes.

Otherwise they might see with their eyes,

Hear with their ears, understand with their hearts,

and turn and be healed.”

Paul quotes this at the end of Acts 28 because of his frustration at the Jews not being able to see the new thing that God is doing.

So the question is:

Do you own your faith?

Do you know why you believe what you do, or are you just copying your institution?

Can you see your psychological armor?

Is it keeping you from hearing how God may be moving things forwards?

Are you able to take it off for a minute to really hear?

I believe it’s the only way the church is going to move forward: to remove our psychological armor and stop kicking against the goads.

 

My Lament

 

I’m a bit of an internal mess this week, so the post is going to be as messy and perhaps a bit ‘ranty’.

Sorry.

I’m having to try and get a part time job waiting tables, in fact I’ve just sent the emails out while I’m sitting here in the coffee shop. Work just isn’t coming in fast enough with the freelancing thing. I suppose no one has any extra money at the moment for things like websites and promotional videos, especially being in the midst of the dreaded recession.

I have to admit to a slow boiling anger, mixed with a bitter disappointment. It feels like I’m taking backward steps.

I sold out for church. I studied for seven years and got two degrees which qualify me perfectly, perhaps over-qualified me, for work in the Institution. My CV never failed to impress at church interviews because it was loaded with more varied experience and skills than many people who have done the job their whole lives.

But now it means nothing.

I cannot get work because all my qualification and experience is pointed in the wrong direction.

To one I am overqualified…

To another I have the wrong experience…

To many I am too white.

I know I have done the right thing. I know leaving the ‘church as my job’ was a ‘God move’; one He led me to take. In good conscience I couldn’t continue there, and I know I need to step outside, hold my ground, and look for a way forward. It’s the ‘prophetic’ (in the ‘biblical sense’, not the ‘fortune teller sense’) role I am meant to play. But I think I had this idea that it would all be roses, that everything would fall into place. I was lied to by many church leaders over the years who promised that if I followed God, He would take care of everything.

I don’t think He does promise that though, not in the way we think.

I also feel bad in many ways for asking for it; asking for security. I have friends who tell me to pray for big jobs with lots of money and nice things, because I am God’s child and He wants to give me these things. Really? I met too many people on the streets who are much worse off than me, but who have a deeper faith than I may ever have, to believe that to be true. Why am I special or more deserving? Why should He make my life comfortable? How can I even ask for that before I ask it for them?

I feel hard done by, by the turn of events…

…then I feel guilty about feeling hard done by.

I feel like so much effort went in to becoming something, that now I cannot, and should not be.

I feel like I have wasted so much time, so many years. I know haven’t. I know I couldn’t speak the way I do now were it not for the years that came before, but it doesn’t stop the feeling.

So in the spirit of many of the Psalms, this is my Psalm of Lament:

“God, why have you left me?

Why have you turned away?

I gave my life, my time and my energy to gladly follow you,

but you never meant me to stay.

I believed you would care for me if I followed you out,

but maybe comfort was never part of your plan for me.

Where to now, what is the point?

If I know there is reason in this, some ultimate goal,

It will make it all worthwhile.

Just a whisper of purpose, the suggestion of a direction would be enough.

But you never promised the answers, you only asked for obedience.

Many will say, ‘See, look how God has abandoned him.”

Show them wrong Father, by being deliberate with my life.

I lie awake in the steel gray light of early morning,

Wondering what the day holds,

Fearful most of all of living a bad story.

Yet I praise you, and follow you willingly.

I will never stop, though it lead me to the streets, or to the grave.

I promised it long ago, ‘no matter where it leads me’.

And I won’t turn back now.”

 

 

Scary Thoughts

 

(Warning: there may be some movie spoilers in this week’s post.)

This weekend was halloween. I decided that I would get involved by watching a scary movie, which is quite a thing for me, because I am a coward when it comes to those kind of movies. I am the guy in the cinema who is looking down into his pop corn, or doing that thing where you’re looking at the screen but not focusing your eyes, so you don’t have to look at the monsters about to the eat the little girl. For example, I recently went to watch a scary movie with friends and I found the one other guy who was as chicken as I was. We sat next to each other sharing my ipod for the frightening scenes. People chasing each other down dark hallways isn’t nearly as unnerving with a Black Eyed Peas soundtrack to it.

Fellow spineless movie goers should give it a go.

So I got into the spirit of this ‘pagan festival of all things freaky’ and went down to the video shop on the ground floor of my building and rented ‘Stigmata’.

Turns out it wasn’t actually that scary, but I did get some interesting stuff out of it.

The premise is that there are 3 Catholic priests who have been ordered to translate a scroll found with the Dead Sea manuscripts. It is written in Aramaic and as they continue to translate they are more and more convinced they have found a text written by Jesus Himself. After passing on the work to their superiors the whole project is suddenly shut down and the translators disbanded, mostly because of one passage.

In the text, Jesus is supposed to have written:

“The Kingdom of God is inside you, and all around you, not in mansions of wood and stone. Split a piece of wood… and I am there, lift a stone… and you will find me.”

The story goes on with one of these priests dying and ‘possessing’ a young woman in order to get this text, which the church is suppressing, out to the world. The idea is that Jesus never meant the church to become about buildings and institutions, but rather to be about the spreading of the Kingdom of God, this alternate reality Jesus came to announce. This threatens the church and causes a desperate scramble to cover this stuff up and ensure the survival of their institution.

There is one specific scene where a Russian priest, one of the original translators, is standing in a beautiful cathedral, ranting away to Gabriel Burnes’ character about how he doesn’t believe in the need for any of this any more, and he doesn’t need an institution to connect him with God. I forget the exact wording but I do remember being struck by the scene.

I know this is a fictitious story, but a few things struck me.

One is that I think this is something Jesus would have actually said. It seems to fit with His message and mode. He spoke about ‘breaking down the Temple and rebuilding it in three days’, which we know, from hindsight’s vantage point, was His way of saying that the Temple system was going to be destroyed and replaced by something which He would begin with His resurrection. But is this just about a new covenant? Or is there something more specific going on? Is He pointing to the fact that this old system of emphasizing buildings, rituals, structures and hierarchies was to be abolished and replaced by something very simple, started by a group of fishermen who would get people to meet in organic communities? Jesus never instructs them about ‘how to build a church’, ‘who to select as pastors or priests’, ‘how to have a service’, ‘how to form a committee’. Everything He taught them related to living life together and effecting the world with positive change by connecting it to God… without heavy religion. In fact every time He comes up against this heavy religion He seems to be tipping tables over, or making whips, or calling them some pretty rough names.

It seems Jesus wasn’t a fan of this stuff… and yet that’s exactly what we went on to build.

The second thought that hit me was that this notion is everywhere. Popular culture is awash with commentary on this disparity between what Jesus did, and what the church stands for in many instances.

I also watched ‘Angels and Demons’ this week; the new Dan Brown movie. Wasn’t that great a movie to be honest, but it also had some interesting elements. At the core of this story is a deranged cleric who is willing to go to great depths to protect what he sees as the ‘sanctity of the Catholic church’. Over and over again in the movie Langdon (who is the Atheist symbologist trying to unravel the recent spate of crimes) comes up against the rigorous religious rituals held for hundreds of year by the Catholic church, and it’s no accident that the writer and director keep putting them in front of you to represent a block to things like ‘justice’ and ‘human goodness’.

It seems that the stories we are telling in popular culture, when it comes to the church, are about a clutching need to control and suppress any opposition; a kind of desperate and insecure ‘circling of the wagons’.

Before the Protestants among you assume that’s good negative attention for the Catholic church who are so religious in your minds, do you really believe the rest of the world sees you any differently? Just go and watch movies like “As it is in Heaven”, “The Invention of Lying”, “Religulous”, “Jesus Camp” and “Saved”. Even stuff like the “Golden Compass” series makes a clear enemy of the religious institutions.

This is in sharp contrast to the early church who, according to Acts, “enjoyed the favour of all the people”. Not that ‘popularity’ is the goal, but it does speak volumes about our posture in the world, and the stories that are being told about us should be enough to get us asking the tough questions.

The third is the battle we have ahead of us; for all those who resonate with the need for a complete ecclesiastical overhaul. The resounding feeling I had coming away from these movies is one of trepidation, and a kind of preemptive weariness. I know we have so much to lose by giving up our structures and hierarchies, our institutions and our brands of ‘heavy religion’. I know that because I have been there. In fact it cost me my job at the end of the day. I can only imagine the fear for someone who has to support a family with their church salary. How could someone like that follow their conscience? Would it be wise? Would it even be right? Isn’t it better just to shut up and ride it out? And because so many have so much to lose from the questions I am asking in this blog, I know that resistance has been, and will continue to be fierce.

I don’t want to give up though. Not because I am persistently anti-church, quite the opposite. It’s because I am so pro-church that I want to see it become everything it should be; to drop the distractions that keep it from being the positive force it should be in the world. I don’t know how to do it yet, or what my role is, but this blog feels like a good place to start.

I want to live to see the day popular culture is telling redemptive, peace-bringing, grace-extending, and life-giving stories about the church, because that’s what they see in us.

(Thanks to those who posted last week. Was good to hear from you.)

Who are you?

I’ve found myself short of time and inclination to write a post this week so I thought I’d try something different.

I have a little stats function in the back end of my wordpress blog which tells me that a bunch of people out there are reading. It would be great to know who you are.

So here’s my idea.

I would love it if as many of you as possible left a short comment at the bottom of this post just saying who you are, where you’re from, and why you’re following along. I know it will take you a minute but I would really appreciate the contact. To be honest, I have been questioning whether this is a worthwhile endeavor or whether I should just pack it in and knuckle down to finish this book. So if you have a moment please use it on this, and encourage a blogger with flagging motivation.

Are you game?

Sunday Stage

There’s a great line from the series ‘Friends’ where Joey introduces himself to a lady as “Doctor Drake Ramoray from Days of our Lives”. When she replies that she doesn’t own a TV, he is shocked. His incredulous response to her is, “No TV? What is all your furniture pointed at?”

I think it’s a worthwhile question to ask; what is all our furniture pointed at? And why?

In your average protestant or charismatic church the furniture is pointed at a stage. Usually on this stage are two things; musical instruments and a pulpit.

In your average sacramental church the furniture is pointed at, well, also a stage actually. Although they may prefer to call it a dias. On this raised platform there is an altar draped with cloth, displaying various iconography.

In both these cases it’s very clear what church is about. We are going to come in, sit down in the chairs/pews, all face the raised platform, and watch the show, engaging only where we are invited to.

Everything may point at the stage now, and has done so for centuries, but it didn’t when the church began. When the 1st century church met they did so in each other’s homes, not in auditoriums. What they got from this is an unparalleled sense of community. They met looking into each other’s faces, seeing each other’s fears and hopes and being able to support each other as we rarely do today. This kind of thing happens more in modern day ‘cell groups’ but we don’t call these ‘church’, ‘church’ is what happens on a Sunday. For instance we will say, “I’m off to church,” on a Sunday morning, but not when we’re heading to a cell meeting during the week. This isn’t just semantics. It reveals something quite troubling about Christians today; ‘church’ is about the ‘Sunday show’ in the minds of many. I know that sounds inflammatory, but I’m not using the phrase to be deliberately unkind. I’m trying to point out that the early church would have been characterized by community and action, where as what we call ‘church’ is characterized by a very passive form of participation. In fact, if we were able to drag an early church member through time to visit one fo our churches I think they would be very confused.

“So that’s it till next week?”

When they taught, in the early church, it may have been in a group setting but was was more likely to be throughout the week in the grit and grime of daily living. Perhaps the closest current equivalent we have is ‘life coaching’. Just look at the way Jesus taught. He walked the roads, with His group of 12, teaching them about how to follow His way in the morally, politically and religiously complex nation that was Israel at the time. The problem with the way we do teaching now is Pastor’s, like I used to be until recently, try and deliver a homily which is generic enough to fit everyone’s situation. So most of what we say may sound good but it doesn’t really move many to change the way they live their lives. I don’t imagine this was a problem in the early church where elders were providing spiritual direction, peers were providing support, and teachers were teaching all in the context of close knit day-by-day community.

Our version of church just doesn’t match up. Look at this quote from a pastor in the book I’m reading at the moment:

“I came through the whole system with the best education that evangelicalism had to offer- yet I really didn’t receive the training that I needed… seven years of higher education in top rated evangelical schools didn’t prepare me to (1) do ministry and (2) be a leader. I began to analyze why I could preach a great sermon and people afterwards would shake my hand and say, “Great sermon, Pastor.” But these were the people who were struggling with self-esteem, beating their spouses, struggling as workaholics, succumbing to addictions. Their lives weren’t changing. I had to ask myself why this great knowledge I was presenting didn’t move from the heads to their hearts and their lives. And I began to realize  that the breakdown in the church was actually based on what we learnt in seminary. We were taught that if you just give people information, that’s enough!”

Worship is the same.

This Sunday passed I helped out a friend by playing in their worship team at church and really enjoyed myself. I never get tired of seeing people connect with God through music. My big worry is though, that people never make the effort to worship God outside the doors of the church. Do we communicate that we have to be sitting in our rows, facing the worship team on the stage, for worship to happen properly? Do people subtly think, “I need the ‘Worship’ team to ‘worship’. It’s in their title after all.” Do we minimize it because what we point our furniture at communicates what we think is important?

Now this is genuinely a hard post to write because I love both of these things. I believe in them too. I still believe there is power in a well delivered message from scripture. I still believe that there is immense value in those who are gifted to play instruments and sing, using these talents to create music that inspires and connects people with God… but church was never meant to be reduced to these things. They should be present in the real life community that is already functioning on genuine love for each other, real mutual support, and society/world changing action and influence.

They should be present, but perhaps not the focus.

And yet these are the things we point our furniture at.

The negative effects of this king of stage-focused church are obvious. It communicates there are professionals and lay people, something the New Testament never supports. It says that when we meet professionals are going to do something and the congregants are going to receive something, and then we’re going to go home. It detracts from community. It communicates that church happens once a week with all of us pointing at a stage. Worship happens on Sundays as we sing along with the band. We are taught once a week with a sermon by the pastor which we hope is good enough to keep us awake until the closing song.

Have we swapped mutual support for professional clergy,

a common space for a stage,

community for a show,

our worldwide mission for our comfortable auditoriums?

There’s a great line from the series ‘Friends’ where Joey introduces himself to a lady as “Doctor Drake Ramoray from Days of our Lives”. When she replies that she doesn’t own a TV, he is shocked. His incredulous response to her is, “No TV? What is all your furniture pointed at?”

It’s one of my favourite lines in the whole series and I think it’s a worthwhile question to ask; what is all our furniture pointed at?

And why?

In your average protestant or charismatic church the furniture is pointed at a stage. Usually on this stage are two things; musical instruments and a pulpit.

In your average sacramental church the furniture is pointed at, well, also a stage actually. Although they may prefer to call it a dias. On this raised platform there is an altar draped with cloth, displaying various iconography.

In both these cases it’s very clear what church is about. We are going to come in, sit down in the chairs/pews, all face the raised platform, and watch the show, engaging only where we are invited to.

Everything may point at the stage now, and has done so for centuries, but it didn’t when the church began. When the 1st century church met they did so in each other’s homes, not in auditoriums. What they got from this is an unparalleled sense of community. They met looking into each other’s faces, seeing each other’s fears and hopes and being able to support each other as we rarely do today.

This kind of thing happens more in modern day ‘cell groups’ but we don’t call these ‘church’. ‘Church’ is what happens on a Sunday. For instance we will say, “I’m off to church,” on a Sunday morning, but not when we’re heading to a cell meeting during the week. This isn’t just semantics. It reveals something quite troubling about Christians today; ‘church’ is about the ‘Sunday show’ in the minds of many. I know that sounds inflammatory, but I’m not using the phrase to be deliberately unkind. I’m trying to point out that the early church would have been characterized by community and action, where as what we call ‘church’ is characterized by a very passive form of participation.

One of the main things we sit to watch on a Sunday is the sermon.

When they taught, in the early church, it may have been in a group setting but was was more likely to be throughout the week in the grit and grime of daily living. Perhaps the closest current equivalent we have is ‘life coaching’. Just look at the way Jesus taught. He walked the roads, with His group of 12, teaching them about how to follow His way in the morally, politically and religiously complex nation that was Israel at the time. The problem with the way we do teaching now is Pastor’s, like I used to be, try and deliver a homily which is generic enough to fit everyone’s situation. So most of what we say may sound good, but it doesn’t really move many to change the way they live their lives. I don’t imagine this was a problem in the early church where elders were providing spiritual direction, peers were providing support, and teachers were teaching all in the context of close knit day-by-day community.

Look at this quote from a pastor in a book I’m reading at the moment:

“I began to analyze why I could preach a great sermon and people afterwards would shake my hand and say, “Great sermon, Pastor.” But these were the people who were struggling with self-esteem, beating their spouses, struggling as workaholics, succumbing to addictions. Their lives weren’t changing. I had to ask myself why this great knowledge I was presenting didn’t move from the heads to their hearts and their lives. And I began to realize  that the breakdown in the church was actually based on what we learnt in seminary. We were taught that if you just give people information, that’s enough!”

But it isn’t, is it.

Worship is the same.

This Sunday passed I helped out a friend by playing in their worship team at church and really enjoyed myself. I never get tired of seeing people connect with God through music. My big worry is though, that people never make the effort to worship God outside the doors of the church. DDo we communicate that we have to be sitting in our rows, facing the worship team on the stage, for worship to happen properly? Do we minimize it because what we point our furniture at communicates what we think is important?

Now this is genuinely a hard post to write because I love both of these things. I believe in them too. I still believe there is power in a well delivered message from scripture. I still believe that there is immense value in those who are gifted to play instruments and sing, using these talents to create music that inspires and connects people with God… but church was never meant to be reduced to these things. They should be present in the real life community that is already functioning on genuine love for each other, real mutual support, and world-changing action and influence.

They should be present, but not the focus.

And yet these are the things we point our furniture at.

The negative effects of this king of stage-focused church are obvious. It communicates there are professionals and lay people, something the New Testament never supports. It says that when we meet professionals are going to do something and the congregants are going to receive something, and then we’re going to go home. It detracts from community. It communicates that church happens once a week with all of us pointing at a stage. Worship happens on Sundays as we sing along with the band. We are taught once a week with a sermon by the pastor which we hope is good enough to keep us awake until the closing song.

Have we swapped mutual support for professional clergy,

a common space for a stage,

community for a show,

our worldwide mission for our comfortable auditoriums?

Dinosaur and Battleship

I went to an incredibly frustrating meeting this past week. There is this group of people wanting to form small communities who meet in each other’s homes and explore issues of spirituality with one another. Sounds good right? Sounded good to me too, like something I would be really interested in. I’m hungry for community at the moment and really keen to join (or start if I have to) some kind of small community who just try and ‘be’ church, without the institutional red tape.

As promising as this group sounded though, this wasn’t what I had been looking for.

Unwittingly, I had walked straight into a business meeting. We hadn’t been there for more than 20 minutes and we were already talking about marketing, organization, vision statements, leadership structures… for crying out loud, a sub-committee had already been formed, and it wouldn’t be the only one that night.

I politely sat through the rest of the meeting, but I won’t be back.

I am desperate for a group of people who are willing to meet around the important things like connecting people with God, building a community who care for each other in real terms, and then stepping out to bravely change the world in a myriad little ways everyday. I just don’t care how we market, or what the chain of command is, or which committee is responsible for which task… we’re not a business, we’re a community.

What is wrong with us?

What is it about human beings in our era that leaves us so obsessed with institutionalizing everything. I have no problem with finding ways to make things run smoother, but I have a huge problem when the structure feels like the whole point. Individuals are ignored, community gets put on hold, and the world suffers a little longer while we create more efficient institutions.

I know I sound a bit hippie but stay with me.

I read this quote this week:

“The real trouble is not in fact that the church is too rich but that it has become too heavily institutionalized, with a crushing investment in maintenance. It has the characteristics of the dinosaur and battleship. It is saddled with a plant and a program beyond it’s means, so that it is absorbed in problems of supply and preoccupation with survival. The inertia of the machine is such that the financial allocations, the legalities, the channels of organization, the attitudes of mind, are all set in the direction of continuing and enhancing the status quo. If one wants to pursue a course which cuts across these channels, then most of one’s energies are exhausted before one ever reaches the enemy lines.”

John Robinson

New Testament Scholar

I may sound like I’m pretty clear on this stuff but to be honest, thinking about it, I’m not sure I wouldn’t fall into the same trap. How do we keep this thing from becoming ‘the dinosaur’, ‘the battleship’? How do we make sure church is still ‘light on it’s feet’ and effective.

Last night I went to a friend’s house for a braai and we ended up talking about starting an informal little community where we just explore what it means to be church, without all the institutional fluff. It’s a conversation which seems to come up regularly in my day to day, and not because I keep bringing it up. But I have this fear: what if I end up just making another institution. We would soon be faced with questions about what to do with our time together, and my propensity to want to organize stuff would soon tempt me into defining, marketing, structuring and branding. And whose to say that I don’t just start bringing in all the old ways of doing church into this new community. I’m sure I am more conservative than I realize when pressed, and I have a suspicion that it would be an uphill battle for me to resist the temptation to take over and codify what we do to the point where it looks like any other church, and again becomes about the wrong things.

So I decided that before I move anywhere with this stuff, I need to make some objective commitments to myself about things I will not do if I join or start a small community. I didn’t get very far, but here are some of the things I scribbled down on a bit of paper:

I will not structure a community which places some in a more important position than others. I don’t believe in the lay/clergy distinction and I will avoid all semblance of the pastor/priest fallacy. Everyone needs to make the community work as a collective; you know, the whole 1 Corinthians 12 idea.

I will not fall into the trap of using lots of resources on ourselves. I want to commit to pooling resources which then get used to meet real needs in people’s lives, not to buy prettier stuff for ourselves.

I will not act like my way of understanding God is ‘more right’ than anyone else’s just because I have studied theology. I will not bully people with knowledge, but will participate in a group to learn, more than to teach or impress.

I will work hard to separate my spiritual preferences, or learned patterns of relating to God, from what the Bible actually says. I will avoid at all costs pushing my spirituality onto others as if it’s the only way to do things.

I will let leaders surface naturally (like New Testament ‘elders’) even if it isn’t me, but if it is I will remember that leading is less about position and more about responsibility to serve.

I will not perpetuate the idea that church happens in meetings, but strive to live out the idea that church is this group who love God, and each other, and who get stuck into life bringing good and Godly change wherever they go.

I will listen.

Taking a cursory glance at each of these I noticed that most of them have to do with my own ego. With this in mind hopefully I am on the road to recovery from my institution-building addiction, but I suppose only time will tell.

I went to an incredibly frustrating meeting this past week. There is this group of people wanting to form small communities who meet in each other’s homes and explore issues of spirituality with one another. Sounds good right? Sounded good to me too, like something I would be really interested in. I’m hungry for community at the moment and really keen to join (or start if I have to) some kind of small community who just try and ‘be’ church, without the institutional red tape.

As promising as this group sounded though, this wasn’t what I had been looking for.

Unwittingly, I had walked straight into a business meeting. We hadn’t been there for more than 20 minutes and we were already talking about marketing, organization, vision statements, leadership structures… for crying out loud, a sub-committee had already been formed, and it wouldn’t be the only one that night.

I politely sat through the rest of the meeting, but I won’t be back.

I am desperate for a group of people who are willing to meet around the important things like connecting people with God, building a community who care for each other in real terms, and then stepping out to bravely change the world in a myriad little ways everyday. I just don’t care how we market, or what the chain of command is, or which committee is responsible for which task… we’re not a business, we’re a community.

What is wrong with us?

What is it about human beings in our era that leaves us so obsessed with institutionalizing everything. I have no problem with finding ways to make things run smoother, but I have a huge problem when the structure feels like the whole point. Individuals are ignored, community gets put on hold, and the world suffers a little longer while we create more efficient institutions.

I know I sound a bit hippie but stay with me.

I read this quote this week:

“The real trouble is not in fact that the church is too rich but that it has become too heavily institutionalized, with a crushing investment in maintenance. It has the characteristics of the dinosaur and battleship. It is saddled with a plant and a program beyond it’s means, so that it is absorbed in problems of supply and preoccupation with survival. The inertia of the machine is such that the financial allocations, the legalities, the channels of organization, the attitudes of mind, are all set in the direction of continuing and enhancing the status quo. If one wants to pursue a course which cuts across these channels, then most of one’s energies are exhausted before one ever reaches the enemy lines.”

John Robinson (New Testament Scholar)

I may sound like I’m pretty clear on this stuff but to be honest, thinking about it, I’m not sure I wouldn’t fall into the same trap. How do we keep this thing from becoming ‘the dinosaur’, ‘the battleship’? How do we make sure church is still ‘light on it’s feet’ and effective.

Last night I went to a friend’s house for a braai and we ended up talking about starting an informal little community where we just explore what it means to be church, without all the institutional fluff. It’s a conversation which seems to come up regularly in my day to day, and not because I keep bringing it up. But I have this fear: what if I end up just making another institution? We would soon be faced with questions about what to do with our time together, and my propensity to want to organize stuff would soon tempt me into defining, marketing, structuring and branding. And whose to say that I don’t just start bringing in all the old ways of doing church into this new community. I’m sure I am more conservative than I realize when pressed, and I have a suspicion that it would be an uphill battle for me to resist the temptation to take over and codify what we do to the point where it looks like any other church, and again becomes about the wrong things.

So I decided that before I move anywhere with this stuff, I need to make some objective commitments to myself about things I will not do if I join or start a small community. I didn’t get very far, but here are some of the things I scribbled down on a bit of paper:

1. I will not structure a community which places some in a more important position than others. I don’t believe in the lay/clergy distinction and I will avoid all semblance of the pastor/priest fallacy. Everyone needs to make the community work as a collective; you know, the whole 1 Corinthians 12 idea.

2. I will not fall into the trap of using lots of resources on ourselves. I want to commit to pooling resources which then get used to meet real needs in people’s lives, not to buy prettier stuff for ourselves.

3. I will not act like my way of understanding God is ‘more right’ than anyone else’s just because I have studied theology. I will not bully people with knowledge, but will participate in a group to learn, more than to teach or impress.

4. I will work hard to separate my spiritual preferences, or learned patterns of relating to God, from what the Bible actually says. I will avoid at all costs pushing my spirituality onto others as if it’s the only way to do things.

5. I will let leaders surface naturally (like New Testament ‘elders’) even if it isn’t me, but if it is I will remember that leading is less about position and more about responsibility to serve.

6. I will not perpetuate the idea that church happens in meetings, but strive to live out the idea that church is this group who love God, and each other, and who get stuck into life bringing good and Godly change wherever they go.

7. I will listen.

Taking a cursory glance at each of these I noticed that most of them have to do with my own ego. With this in mind hopefully I am on the road to recovery from my institution-building addiction, but I suppose only time will tell.