Brief Musings about Liturgy

I'm a member of the American Baptist Church USA. We're all over the map theologically, as it were. Some of fundamentalist, some are quite liberal. Yet we are united on key doctrines such as the resurrection, the priesthood of all believers, etc.

So it may strike some as odd that I would be attending an African-American Episcopal church here in Pasadena. Well, it is kind of odd. Our priest is a British dude, we have a woman deacon (which is awesome), and we do the whole wine and bread thing seriously (using actual wine). At my old churches, we were crazy for going for the more pricey brand of grape drink. So its been an experience considering much of my church background has been in low church settings ala Calvary Chapel.

The worship is different, the communion setting is different, the fellowship is different. Everything is just different.

And its awesome.

I never got liturgy as a kid, so I do wonder what my life would have been like had I been around the old hymns and settings. Good Lord the smells. I now associate recently extinguished candles and their pungent smoke with liturgy. Wisps of white that ascend and mingle in the air, letting us know service is over and yet not over. Liturgy, for me, is a manner of reflection, a time to meander in my mind about the previous day and the future week.

Liturgy, in essence, is rumination. Considering the effects of the the resurrection, of living a life in the tension between the Kingdom of God and the effects of Ferguson. Since the church is predominantly African-American, I'm privy to the conversations and laments of mothers and brothers and fathers and sisters who know and speak on them weekly.

Deacon Jamie spoke. Rev. Goldingay spoke. All of us speak on race, but with an eye towards reconciliation. Towards forgiveness. We sing each service old African hymns, modern classics and end it usually with this famous diddy:

"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine."

"Go into the world, just go, to love and serve the Lord. Hallelujah, hallelujah."  says Deacon Jamie.

And what a broken, bitter, painful, wonderful world it is.

NQ

Pulse: Church & Christ (A Guest Post by Nathan Jeffers)

I grew up in the church. I can't tell you how many times I've said that phrase. Usually it's in response to a question. Like, "how long have you been a Christian?" or "tell me a bit about yourself..." or "why do you have so many psychological problems?" (you'd be surprised how much I get that last one). Church is where I made friends, hung out, played dumb youth group games, oh and learned a bit about someone called Jesus. The church has always been a part of my life. For better or worse. I've seen people's lives be miraculously transformed, I've seen people become bitter, I've seen enormous good and heart-breaking bad. I'm always reminded that as long as the church is filled with people, it will be flawed. But thank God we don't get to have the last word. The church (and the people in it) have had a part in shaping me into the person I am today. And I've realized the responsibility that our generation has in shaping what the church will be in the years to come. The church is not just our parents' church. It's ours. Our generation is really great at pointing out things that are broken or being misused, but we're not great at fixing things. To quote the prophet Kanye West, "I'm so gifted at finding what I don't like the most." Maybe that's an over-generalization, but I do know that I am really great at complaining, but not so good at finding a solution. So here are a few rambling thoughts on some issues that I've began to notice with the church, which our generation is going to be tasked with challenging: 

(Just a side-note: I'm not pointing out these things to simply bash the church. I actually see great things within the church as it stands and I just want us to be aware of how we get in the way of God working and doing good in the world. Also, I know there are many more problems ailing the church/world and these might not seem applicable to your situation, these are just what I've began to notice in my own context.) 

* Our buildings and programs are all designed to get people to fall into place. You are supposed to come as a new person, feel welcomed, sing some songs, listen to the sermon, maybe even get involved with a bible study, and then find an area where you can "serve" at the church. In the midst of this process you're supposed to become a Christian. Usually by that we mean saying a prayer and agreeing to an established set of doctrines. In this system, the mark of a "healthy Christian" is a person who has signed off on the church's statement of faith, attends a weekly bible study, raises their hands during worship, and serves as a usher on Sunday mornings. Churches are set up to accommodate this conversion process on a large scale. Our services are set up to welcome as many people as possible. But what if this modern, industrialized version of church was actually making it harder to actually follow Christ's teachings? 

* The church has become more like an event we attend, rather than a place to encourage one another towards doing good. Church should never be the main event. It should be the epicenter of transformation that sends out grace-filled people to make the broken things of the world become new again. The church is often just a series of routines to learn and patterns to follow, but it could be so much more than than. Maybe sometimes I don't want it to be more than that, but I've seen some beautiful things come out of taking God's call to be ministers of reconciliation. And I can't help but wonder if there's more to life than Sunday mornings and weekly routines. 

* When does church and it's popular structure get in the way of us doing what God has called us to? What if God was asking us to feed the hungry and we said, "sorry God, I have to go to church"? What if God was asking us to give water to the thirsty and we said, "sorry God, I have worship team practice"? What if God was asking us to care for the widows and the orphans and we said, "sorry God, I have bible study tonight"? Our church structures have the possibility to transform us or to stifle our growth. We must be acutely aware of the tension that presides in our churches and if a tradition is causing us to act less like Christ, then we need to reevaluate and possibly change it. * Going to church doesn't make you a great person. Being a Christian doesn't make you a great person. In fact, some of the nicest, kindest, Jesus-like people I've ever met have been people that considered themselves "searching agnostics". And I've met some Christians that consider themselves as the arbiter of truth who think they are so righteous, holy, and yet are complete jerks. It's better to be a humble searching agnostic, than a prideful Christian. When we believe (as the church has sometimes taught us) that we have all the answers, then we have sorely missed out on what it means to follow Jesus. Was Jesus sometimes about giving the "right answer"? Yes. But his life was dedicated to something much greater. He summed it up when he said, "‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’" His life was dedicated to love. Love enough to heal, love enough to listen, love enough to die for his friends and his enemies. 

* I've been learning a lot about what it means to be a great leader. The best leaders I've ever met try to get their ego out of the way as much as possible, lead by serving, and are vulnerable with the people they are leading. I've learned that a pastor's job is not to be a great preacher, it's to instruct and encourage everyone in the church to be their own pastor. Their job is to give over power by training the members of the congregation to develop their own ability and authority as a follower of Christ. Our churches often have the mindset that the pastor is the holder of all knowledge and we are supposed to attend church to absorb that knowledge like a sponge. Never daring to question. You can even see it in the way that our churches are physically set up. The preacher is up front, often on a literal pedestal, and the congregation is sitting in rows to be guided by their leader. This has caused us to place undue responsibility on our pastors to be holy people while we get on with normal everyday life. We have to recognize that all of us has a mixture of the ordinary and the divine within us. 

* We all have the responsibility to constantly die to our self and be transformed to look more like Christ.

Nathan Jeffers is a fellow graduate of Biola University. He tweets about 1,800 times and hosts Listen, a marvelous organization of searching souls in search of searching. You can enjoy their delightful podcast there as well.

Sick Burn Theology

Sick Burn Theology -- : a method, or expression, of putting down anyone who falls outside of your tribe. Usually within the realms of uninvolved social media.

Its something we're all guilty of, especially in the age of faceless opponents. Often, in my case, its very easy to dismiss and condescend to someone you don't know. Rendered in pixels and imager instant backhands, its become sort of a phenomenon. This isn't hindered by Twitter which reduces complexities to something the length of a single sentence.

This can include everyone from myself to you to Mark Driscoll to Brian McLaren. This generally isn't regulated to a single group or tribe. You can sense simmering piety in the words of emergent leaders who talk beyond the fundamentalists, and you would be hard pressed to find a fundamentalist who genuinely cares to listen.

Part of the issue could be accounted for in the millennial controversy (Rachel Held Evans for instance; see Greg Boyd for the general debate). For instance, one wonders if millennials are vindicated in leaving the church, especially when the church is only just beginning to emerge from a post-fundamentalist era. Do we change or die? Or do we just keep things static and horizontal? The answer is elusive and beyond the confines of my research so I will just leave this here to extrapolate later.

Millennials, in reduction, are a generation home-grown on social-interactive media, pixels and sarcasm. Its no secret that twitter is far more popular amongst us and we are singularly the one group that feels the most isolated. What does this have to do with theology, especially the kind I alluded to in the title?

Simply, I do worry that my generation is part of the problem. We've reduced interactions, in some significant part, to putting down the established church. For example, you find fundamentalist pastors who enjoy putting down opponents in their sermons while never actually engaging with their concerns. You also have a decentralized network of post-emergent leaders who thrive off the same sort of condescension, equating cultural shifts with theological necessity.

It is difficult to tell the church why you are leaving when you only have 140 characters. Many of us are at least two characters, maybe more.

So what do we do?

Its easy for those of us not in the neo-puritan movement to write blog posts about Mark Driscoll and John Piper, and it is just as easy for them to throw off some 'sick burns' from the pulpit at unnamed (but obvious) opponents.

So we need a Pope.

Not really.

But I do wonder if "sick burn theology" is simply a fad -- or worse -- a reduction of my generation. Since we tend to proclaim openness and inclusivism and dialogue as major tenants of our faith, why then are we so fractured? Its no secret that I tend to be theological conservative, but most of my conservative friends consider me liberal.

In a polarized culture torn between two extremes, I don't see millennials getting any better at bridging this gap simply because we have no sense of history. We could simply change and be perfect, but in some sense, we might like the conflict. In some ways, it may make us 'morally superior.' In other ways, it just makes us petty. Personally, I've been guilty of both so this is something more for us to reconsider.

Consider this a plea: continue to dialogue in humility with your brothers and sisters within the church. The church has gone from radical abolitionism to Jim Crow to wherever we are now. The church, she is flexible. Us, on the other hand, should drop the 'sick burn' mentality and practice some more yoga.

In short, stop. Just stop. Listen. Breathe. Take a chill pill. Step away from twitter, Facebook and instagram. Avoid reduction and embrace the complexities of life.

And we really need a Pope.

--Nick

Pulse: Myths in Pre-Mature Resolution (A Guest Post by Jordan Nakamura)

Before all else, I’d like to respond to the prompt at face value: hands down, the “topic our generation will deal with the most” is homosexuality and LGBTQ rights. It is what has been elected as the cultural question of the age, in the United States at least. I have a lot of thoughts on the issue myself, I think it’s important to talk about it, and i’m glad that we are. I especially hope that people who identify as Christians will continue to begin a healthy discourse. We have handled it horribly for a long time, one response among many inexcusable ones being the whole “if you just don’t talk about it, it’ll go away” charade. It’s often painfully obvious that there is still a long way for Christian communities to go. But for the most part, I’d much rather see people making some mistakes in the same room trying to reconcile than to see them staying comfortably worlds apart, safe in their festering assumptions.

But as for what I think is the most important, other issues come to mind as better candidates. To clarify, I mean better candidates than legalizing gay marriage, not evasive action and advocacy against homophobic violence, which is about as important as anything else I can think of. Basically I’m going to attest that any “third world issue” is more important than “first world issues.” A large number of these third world issues stem from racism, and while racism to some might sound like a simple pitfall to avoid, even black toddlers in the States will pick a white doll over a black one. In light of this, it becomes important to investigate who our white leaders are picking to assist and understand before aiding or bombing, because the results get to be as serious as life and death. At the end of the day, it’s still important in this age to investigate exactly why it was Japan and Asians that were bombed, and not Germany and white people. It is our generation that needs to look at these things to grapple with present issues: why black unarmed teens are still being shot and why nobody covers the story, and why I have seen white co-workers walk in completely blazed on pot and not get a second look for it. In this way, these third world issues of racism and even sexism become the issues of our generation in the first world, but go unacknowledged as relevant or even existent, let alone our onus. This is why I’d argue that issues of racism and sexism in any “world” is a priority. It is more important that people not die because of preventable causes than it is that gay marriage is legalized. That might piss people off, but I stand by it, as do I stand by my belief that gay marriage should be allowed. But people who compare movements of LGBTQ rights to the Black Civil Rights movement simply have not looked at history with clarity or respect. I’m not trying to pit one issue against the other. Disproportionate death by AIDS in the LGBTQ community is a tragedy, and like anyone, I hope a cure is found. but I also hope that we work towards remedying the effects and occurrence of disproportionate murder and captivity of black skinned human beings, which has been going on a lot longer than AIDS existed. Again though, the problem is when people start pretending like this ancient issue is covered, and in the current “Age of Obama,” the post-racial narrative is rampant and sets the stage for the marginalization of these issues.

Let’s examine some of our culture for a minute, the culture that predicates this very post as almost certainly being read from a glowing computer screen: Due to highly accelerated networking, information has completely changed in nature and shape. Capitalism and consumerism have been altered. Young people like myself are not good at imagining a world before this new order, let alone how something like commerce used to run. What most people in our generation will acknowledge is that images are everywhere, at a constant inundating rate. Given this, we might conclude that issues of race and gender are perhaps more relevant today than ever before, because never have our ideas of them been so easily malleable, the icons of these ideas so easily created and spread, nor their effects so easily covered up. By nature, race and gender are sort of airy. For example, even at the genetic level, I have no more chance of being more genetically similar to another Japanese person than I do to a Norwegian person. Despite this, race is a phenomenon that has been called into being. It is real because the effects are real, but there is no locus in object. Sex and ethnicity, of course, are very real in the sense that they’re biologically measurable, and are objective. The mechanics of how images and narratives work in the modern world have mutated, and these changes need to be addressed in addition to inherited systemic problems. 

The idea that we are living in a “post-racial age” is also a major factor. This idea is widely accepted as common sense: the notion that we no longer need to deal with issues of race because it is a solved or moot issue. Race being removed from public consciousness contributes to the emphasis on gender. Therefore, any sociological energy that the public has is given to LGBTQ concerns. Race, once again is marginalized, due to the myth that racial marginalization is a checked off item on the humanitarian To-Do list of history. Some of this has to do with an institutionalized historical slant towards a version of history that sterilizes the Black Civil Rights movement, making it out to be a safe topic that never reaches the present. Some of it has to do with the fact that a man named Barack Hussein Obama is the President of the United States. Again, I want to stress that I don’t want to eclipse one cause with another. It’s precisely that motivation that I re-emphasize race which I think has certainly been eclipsed by other issues. My definition of more important reads as “more important to reassess the importance of.” The effects of racism in America are rampant, widespread, and too often fatal, and few people realize that it is even an issue anymore, whereas legalizing gay marriage is important in the public eye to the point of it being hip. It’s a lot harder to make a mass-profile picture icon about generations of unintentional but destructive microaggressions, and so it doesn’t happen. The quote about white privilege isn’t going to get several thousand shares on tumblr, like the one on gay marriage will. Understandable I suppose, but what isn’t okay is how the issue then drops off the map because it isn’t recognized in pop culture, politics, and daily interactions.

Hopefully, the church will realize that followers of Christ should be running with the vanguard in any true societal brokenness, yearning and fighting for justice and entering into the pain. I do not have the time here to elaborate on why I have become convinced that race and marginalized issues are at the forefront of cultural battles to be stationed within, but I trust readers can continue to investigate for themselves. But I must address the prompt which asks what issue is the most important for our “Christian generation.” Obviously, anyone can fight for racial justice or women’s rights or anything else, believing in God is not a requirement. Sadly, the bulk of the Western Christian population has more or less been content to leave most of these fights to people who do not identify as Christians. But I want to talk a bit about something that is a big question for many in “the church” which probably isn’t for others outside of it. I’m going to refer to this as the “weird supernatural” spiritual gifts, or “miracle work” in the Holy Spirit. 

Jordan Nakamura can be found via the Twittersphere, and on the rest of the Interwebs.

Pulse: Sin & Faith (Guest Post by Kyle A. Kiekintveld)

1. What important topic do you think our Christian generation (20s) has to deal with the most? Why must we deal with this issue? 

The Church always considers itself in crisis, in need to address the differences between secular society and the Scripture, in the need make sense of war, poverty and the sorrow of the world, but one of the biggest issues facing the Church is not exclusive to the Church, it is best addressed by the parishioners. It is an idea as old as civilization, but greatly exacerbated by our culture of constant consumption of media, celebrity and social networking.

It is the concept that we are simple beings. It is the idea that we can see a little of someone, through reality television (which of course is as real as the WWE), we know someone through what they say on Facebook, through the gossip, through the their attendance (or lack of) at Church. We think people have the perfect marriage, the perfect children, just because of a few quick Facebook or Instagram pictures. We have arrogantly oversimplified life and experience that we feel with little information we can understand what another person has gone through, we can pass judgement on their worth.
Of course this has no Biblical basis and we are warned heavily against judging one another, but it is part of the human condition. It is heavily ingrained not only in our culture but our psychology as well. The benefits of making decisions and judgements on people are numerous, even when we know we must fight it.

2. In what (positive or negative) ways has our generation already engaged with this issue?

The Bible addresses this issue directly, most powerfully with the story of the Woman at the Well. In the midday heat while Jesus takes a break at Jacob’s Well, a Samaritan woman went to fetch water, and in typical Jesus fashion, Jesus broke a number of taboos, he spoke to her (who was to be despised because she was not just a woman but a Samaritan woman) and he asked her to fetch him a drink, which would have rendered the drink unclean. The woman was known to have multiple husbands and be living with a man she was not wed to (thus she fetched water at the hottest part of the day to avoid the judgment of others) still Jesus broke taboos to speak to her. He did not think twice to speak to the woman despite her immorality. 

At the best of times Church can be an emotional and spiritually difficult place to attend but for those who are introverted, those who struggle with their own sins, to feel judged when they attend Church just created a barrier that can seem insurmountable. Yet despite of stagnant or even dwindling Church attendance Christian media is a successful and even growing industry. People still have faith but feel a disconnect with Church itself.

3. What can we do to improve our relationship with addressing this issue? Or can things be improved?

Fortunately all is not lost on this issue. Churches have numerous ways to combat this disconnect, from Podcasts of Sermons to Outreach Groups to House Churches. The latter two are perhaps the best responses the Church has. Both allow much more intimate worship than trying to blend into a crowd of dozens, hundreds or even thousands. These are not complete solutions to the problem, in the end we must remember even if we know the sin, the sinner is made in God’s beautiful and infinitely complex image.

Kyle A. Kiekintveld is a writer based out of Western Michigan, he is an avid beer, music, literature and video game aficionado. Despite his love for profanity, violent, violent video games and Harry Potter, Kyle is fairly certain Jesus would like him. He can be found on Twitter and Tumblr.

John Locke's Egalitarianism

John Locke, whilst engaged in writing his notes on the Epistles of St. Paul, was at a meeting where two women preached. After hearing them, he became convinced of their commission to publish the gospel, and thereupon altered his notes on the 11th Ch. I Cor. in favor of women's preaching.

He says,

This about women seeming as difficult a passage as most in St. Paul's Epistles, I crave leave to premise some few considerations. It is plain that this covering the head in women is restrained to some peculiar actions which they performed in the assembly, expressed by the words praying, prophesying, which, whatever they signify, must have the same meaning applied to women in the 5th verse, that they have when applied to men in the 4th, &c. The next thing to be considered is, what is here to be understood by praying and prophesying. And that seems to me the performing of some public actions in the assembly, by some one person which was for that time peculiar to that person, and whilst it lasted, the rest of the assembly silently assisted. As to prophesying, the apostle in express words tells us, Ch. 14:3, 12 that it was speaking in the assembly. The same is evident as to praying, that the apostle means by it publicly with an audible voice, ch. 14:19.

In a letter to these two women, Rebecca Collier and Rachel Bracken, which accompanied a little testimony in his regard, he says,

I admire no converse like that of Christian freedom; and I fear no bondage like that of pride and prejudice. I now see that acquaintance by sight cannot reach the height of enjoyment, which acquaintance by knowledge arrives unto. Outward hearing may misguide us, but internal knowledge cannot err. . .Women, indeed, had the honor of first publishing the resurrection of the God of love--why not again the resurrection of the spirit of love? And let all the disciples of Christ rejoice therein, as doth your partner, John Locke.

Powerful.

--Nick

See Elizabeth Ann Bartlett, "Sarah Grimke: Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and Other Essays" 91-92.

Gender and the Modern Church

 I found this post by Dr. Craig Keener, and while I don't agree with everything, I found a lot of value in his writing.

Keener:

Sometimes more traditional interpreters have accused those of us who follow this approach of dishonoring the Bible. This accusation, however, misrepresents the debate's real crux: how one should apply the Bible. After all, the prophets, Jesus and Paul all reapplied some earlier biblical principles in new circumstances; addressing a new situation, Paul, for example, adds an explicit exception to Jesus's teaching about divorce. It is therefore biblical as well as pastorally sensitive to consider how we apply texts.

Moreover, the issue involves how we can apply the Bible consistently. Most of those who oppose women's ordination do not follow biblical instructions to greet one another with holy kisses or wear head coverings in church. Most recognize that these were cultural expressions of principles (such as friendly greetings) that may be applied differently in different cultures. Certainly most churches do not take up offerings for the Jerusalem church every Sunday (1 Corinthains 16:1-3) and most Bible readers do not feel compelled to go to Troas, get Paul's cloak and try to take it to him (2 Timothy 4:13). When they neglect these instructions, they do not see themselves as disobeying the Bible. They simply recognize that we need to take into account the situations the biblical writers addressed, before extracting larger principles. That is not only how we read the Bible but how we learn from any wisdom originally written in the past. Nearly all communication uses a language and some cultural setting!

For the original, enjoy it here.

--Nick