Songs of Resurrection

Spent quite a bit of time preparing for our Easter morning worship service today. I noticed something very strange while we were planning this and I really don't have a clue as to why this is true. It is very difficult to find worship music that is centered on the resurrection. Almost every song we found was more about Good Friday than Easter Sunday. Why is that? Why are most of these songs centered on the cross and not the empty grave? 

My only thought is that for some reason it must be easier for us to conceptualize Jesus on the cross, than it is for us to conceptualize Jesus raising from the dead. Maybe this is because of the world of visuals. Artwork abounds with the cross (like this giant one featured at the top of this post), but what kind of artwork is there of the empty grave? I don't know anyone who wears a symbol of the resurrection around a chain on their neck. To illustrate this lack of illustration presented below are the first two images that come up when I Google Image the word "Easter." 

I wonder what the implications are to this lack of resurrection thought? I've notice (and have nothing empirical to back this up), that a lot of Christians struggle with the idea of resurrection. Even the earliest Christians struggled with that idea, remember Thomas? If not, Ben Linus has a speech in LOST about Thomas. There are a good number of Christians who demonstrate a lack of foundational thought on the resurrection in three ways that I've noticed:

1. Bodily Resurrection? A lot of Christians seem to think that when we are raised from the dead we will be spirits living in some netherworld with God. The body has no part of this future life. This thought is sometimes demonstrated in the following phrase: "We are spiritual beings having a physical experience." I'm sorry, but this is just flat heresy. Read Paul's ideas in 1 Cor 15. We will be raised with a bodily resurrection, just like Jesus. Maybe then we shouldn't just focus our spirituality on the inner experiences. Maybe our bodies also have a role in our spirituality. I've been thinking about this for a few weeks and will probably unpack this idea next week sometime. 

2. Spiritual warfare. This is an observation that I noticed while a student at ORU. A lot of energy is spent by some to lay out the specifics of the demonic world. Don't get me wrong, we need to intercede to our Father against the powers of darkness. But we have faith in this because of the resurrected Christ. I got the feeling that sometimes in these spiritual warfare conversations that the reality of the resurrection was never really understood. Why spend our time trying to outline the demonic, instead of focusing our energy on the power of the resurrection. 

3. Sanctification. My Wesleyan roots come out on this one. Many of us, if not most of us, don't actually expect, nor have we experienced, a transformed life. We keep living in the same cycles of sin and destructive that we have always known. Many of us don't actually believe that we can be free from lust, gluttony, gossip, anger, or pride (to name a few things that seem to enslave us). I heard Don Chaffer recently say (supposedly quoting George Barna, which I don't know if this is actually true but I can't argue with it based on my own observations) that there is no real difference between Christians in America and non-Christians in America except that Christians were less likely to recycle. I think this lack of noticeable difference in our lives is based on a lack of belief that resurrection is the reality of our faith. If the resurrection is the reality of my life, than I will experience newness of life personally. The sin that has enslaved me cannot stand up against the power of the resurrection. The resurrection has set me free, and my our lives can actually demonstrates this freedom. 

For many of us, we celebrate Christmas almost to a fault, but have no idea what resurrection is about; most of us have no idea how Easter intersects our lives. 

Sim City, NASA Style

Interesting article about the possibility of life on other planets outside of our solar system.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/02/25/galaxy.planets.kepler/index.html?eref=rss_topstories


Two thoughts on this article:
1. This sounds just like the old computer game Sim City, which I loved and have wondered if I could find an on-line version to play. I will claim ignorance here, not being a scientist, but since when did Sim City become a part of the scientific method?

2. I wonder what the implications are to theology if some sort of life was found outside our solar system? The implications would be even greater if this was intelligent life. What would that do to our understanding our place with God? And what would this do to our anthropomorphisms of God?

Steroids, conclusion

I ran out of time yesterday, so I will complete my thoughts on steroids and sports. 

Major League Baseball finds itself at a crossroads on the issue of performance enhancing drugs. On the one hand, they desperately need to reform their drug policy. On the other hand, their sport (like all pro-sports) makes its money based on the performance of its stars. When records are broken, more tickets are sold, more people buy the jerseys, more advertisers pay more money for commercial spots during the broadcast, etc. So, what is baseball to do? Should they reform and risk losing dollars because of the lack of ability of players to naturally perform like they are now. Or, do they let scandal after scandal destroy them and in the end risk losing even more fans and even more money? 

I write all that as a pretty obvious metaphor. As a pastor in a mainline church, I'm asking the same question. We are operating with antiquated practices that years ago produced results but now fail miserably. Do we seek methodological reformation, and by doing so risk alienating our present "fan base?" Or do we seek to prop up what has worked before and by doing so risk our future "fan base?" I'm not pretending that the kind of reformation that needs to take place is easy. It is not. It is painful, ugly, and risks destroying us. But on the other hand so does the status quo. 

Some mainline clergy have preferred to simply "switch sports." They have decided that baseball is a sinking ship so they will go play football (or better yet, track and field). I'm talking about those who don't see the future of the mainline church and have jumped ship to what may look like a better church, a better denomination or a non-denomination (I may have stretched this metaphor too far by now).

I see the trouble. I see the pain. I see the potential future if we stay the course, but I'm also hopeful. Redemption is the lens in which I see the world. Even though the mainline church may be struggling and may be doomed, I am committed to this because she is still Christ's bride. She is still beautiful. She is still in need of people who love her and hold out the hope for redemption. She is in need of people who will ask the questions and lead her through the needed reformation in order to truly live into the fullness of Christ. 

Steroids

So, I've been thinking about the steroids issue in professional sports the past few days. Usually when I hear someone talk about A-Rod and his using I just refer that person to the sport of Athletics. The IAAF (the international track and field regulatory body) has some of the strictest rules in the sports rules when it comes to performance enhancing drugs:
First offense: two year ban, lifetime Olympic ban
Second offense: you cannot make a profit from the sport.

Granted there are still some faults with the system and some who still cheat and find ways not to get caught (hey, I personally know a few) . A two year ban is a long time in a track runner's career: a long career will be 8 years pro, a very long career will be 12, an unheard of long career will be 16 (intervals of four b/c of Olympic Games). On top of it, track and field has had several high profile athletes suffer the consequence of these rules: Marion Jones, Justin Gatlin, Tim Montgomery). What strikes me about this system is that even a struggling professional sport is still willing to penalize some of its leading athletes just to maintain the purity of the sport.

What's keeping baseball from actually being tough on this issue? They are trying to maintain fan base by keeping up the appearance of purity, but the longer they dance around the issue then the worse the using will become. Its time to just get tough and enact some lifetime bans. Remember Pete Rose, right? He cheated and got kicked out. Why are performance enhancing drugs different?

Excellent Ministry

this post is really for me to vent b/c I've spent the past two days at a retreat for clergy in the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church. The topic of the retreat is excellence in ministry, but I've heard very little on how to actually be excellent in a life of ministry. The reason for this is that when clergy hear the word "excellent" attached to their ministry, many seem to bristle up with either fear or frustration. This reaction is probably due to the way excellence has been defined, which is principally through numbers of people coming to worship and financial soundness of the church.

In response to this rigidity in defining excellence, this retreat has focused almost exclusively on simply being true to your self, which will lead to a ministry of excellence. I fail to see the connection. Granted, we have to be authentic to our own calling and our own gifts. And I get that our effectiveness in ministry cannot fully be measured through empirical evidence. But what we have done during these two days is to ignore the fact that we are an evangelical church. I don't mean evangelical in a political sense, but in the sense that whether we are liberal or conservative we are people who proclaim a message of hope found through Jesus Christ. Our mission, as defined by our Book of Discipline, is to "make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world." I hope that we can in some way measure if we are being effective in reaching this mission of our church. I can be true to self, but even more than that I hope that I have born fruit for the Kingdom. Fruit in changed lives, in more people hearing the good news, and in more people experiencing the fullness of life found in Christ.

Incarnational Communications

I have recently engaged in several conversations regarding the way Asbury practices communication. Generally, we are talking about things like event announcements through traditional media such as a website, magazine, postcards, etc.

On the other hand, there are people in the church who are beginning to question alternative forms of communication, namely social networking. As I've been thinking about this, I've come to realize why the church has been hesitant to adopt these "new" forms of communication. This trouble essentially comes down to the way the church has understood the strategy of communication. The church's communication strategy is as follows:
1. Pulpit- this is where the majority of substantive communication occurs. Things like vision, identity, and purpose are established through the pulpit.
2. Event announcements- this is the real bulk of where we spend our money as a church. We want to let people know how they can get involved in an event or program because we believe that Christian discipleship will occur at this level.

The problem to adapting to new forms of communication is really a struggle to understand the place of the pulpit. The real beauty of something like Twitter, for instance, is not so much that it has the ability to announce events (which it does), but really in the way that it intersects daily life. This intersection with daily life is really about thought process paradigm shifts. So, in some ways Twitter becomes the place where you are going to influence how people think about the world, how people interact with others, and how people even view themselves. For a church to engage in these emerging forms of communication is not a matter of being "relevant," "trendy," or "cool" it is really about interacting with the way people are thinking about and experiencing life.

If this is true, Twitter in some ways is a new pulpit; Facebook is a new "hospital bed" (the place pastoral care happens). Twitter, in some ways, is the place where you shape vision, identity, and purpose. Essentially, this is a matter of being incarnational. I am going to speak the Good News in the ways that actually intersect life, the ways people experience their daily life. Twitter is a way for the church to proclaim Gospel, but only if we too can begin to have a paradigm shift ourselves.

GBCS

I'll throw out a disclaimer from the get-go: I am no fan of the General Boards in the United Methodist Church. That said, I can't believe the action of the General Board of Church and Society in the past few weeks. 

Here is a quick polity lesson in the United Methodist Church. The UMC is ruled by the "Book of Discipline." The BOD outlines all decisions at every level of the UMC from a local church all the way to the national/international levels. The BOD is only altered every four years by a legislative body called the General Conference. The GC is made of both lay and clergy delegates from every Annual Conference. Methodists describe themselves as "connectional." Local churches connect with other local churches and form an Annual Conference. The Annual Conference then does work at a higher level than an individual local church can do. Nationally, Annual Conferences connect with other Annual Conferences and form General Boards. The General Boards only have authority to enact what the General Conference has said, and the GC only exists for 10 days every four years. 

That said, the General Board of Church and Society is one such General Board that is represents the Annual Conferences, which represent the local churches. The GBCS has come out with a big endorsement of the new stimulus plan b/c they think the stimulus plan will help the poor.

 Three questions: 

1. Have they actually read the stimulus plan and then given enough time to debate the actual impact these policies will have on the poor? I can't imagine they have. The thing is something like 1100 pages long! No, instead the GBCS is more concerned with courting the new President. 

2. Why are we hitching are cart to a governmental plan? Do we think that the transformation we seek in society is going to come from an federal economic plan? Really?

3. Why are they speaking w/o the authority of the General Conference? They are making statements that are simply not true for a great many United Methodists. This is not to say that I am opposed to the plan, but I am not going to attach the hope found in the Good News to a plan the federal government is proposing. I even voted for this President, and I can tell you that the GBCS is not speaking for me. 

This issue of the GBCS hoping for systemic change through federal legislation is just a poorly conceived idea, but it is the backbone of this General Board. But why would Christians be looking for the government as a means for the spread of God's kingdom? The GBCS is essentially the same as the Christian Coalition at this point, just different ideologies. Why do these Christian groups place their hope in the government for systemic change? For instance, if we ban gay marriage are we really making more disciples of Jesus? If we endorse the stimulus plan are we really making more disciples of Jesus?

The only reason I can possibly fathom why these groups put their hope in government is that they don't trust that the Holy Spirit can actually transform people and bring about real change in society. The only evidence I see in history of real Christian transformation is when the church is not concerned chiefly with the state but is invested in people, especially the poor. Lets get rid of these Constantinian ideas and trust in the fact that Christ overcame death, he overcame Caesar (government) and he is the only way our world will be transformed. 

The Underfunded Church

Yesterday Tom Harrison preached an outstanding sermon on how the church is under performing because she is underfunded.
Here is the link: http://www.asburytulsa.org/sermons/archives.html

I lead a study last night on the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, "You cannot serve both God and money." The word serve is the Greek root of liturgy: you cannot serve/worship both God and money. Thinking through my life and asking some tough questions about my spending habits I am left wondering how in my life I am either serving and worshiping God or serving and worshiping money. I tithe and try to make generosity a daily rule in my life (unless it comes to food- I hate sharing food! I would just assume buy you a whole sandwich than give you a bite from mine).

For the first time in my adult life I feel that I am starting to make positive changes in my finances that transcend my tithe. It used to be that because I tithed I assumed I was not worshiping and serving money. But now, Abby and I are working our way out of debt enough that we have seen how our lives have been spent in service of money instead of having money serve us and ultimately serve God.

I've been experiencing this change through a budget process. Now, I've always had a budget but I've rarely kept to a budget. It was just too restricting. In the past year or so, we've actually been keeping to our budget which means that at times we don't have money to eat out again or buy new clothes or go out of town. In this way, it is restricting. However, we've also paid off enough debt that we have more money to give and to save and invest in things that honor God. I don't make a lot of money, but I'm seeing that even with the small amount of money I make I can actually make a pretty big impact financially for the kingdom. Its just a matter of me learning to live responsibly in all of my life. The key to me living according to a budget is simple: contentment. Am I content with what God has given me? Am I content both when I am in plenty and when I am in want? For me, the evidence of contentment is if I'm living below my means.

If I can continue to grow in contentment and continue to make my money serve me then I get excited about thinking about what I can fund for the kingdom. The church does not have to be underfunded, I can make a difference with my salary as it is now. I can make a difference that changes lives, brings justice, and spread the kingdom of God.

The Office- thoughts on why it sucks!

To begin, I've been a huge fan of The Office. I've seen them all, most of the webisodes, and even most of the deleted scenes. I own the first three seasons of the show and love those seasons. However, I have been majorly disappointed in the show in the past two years and can pinpoint one event that was the beginning of the end: casino night when Jim kissed Pam.

I remember that night clearly. I know that most people loved it because of the tension building all season, but when it happened I looked over at my friends sitting on the couch and announced the obvious, "this isn't funny. The Office is supposed to be funny. This just isn't funny!" What I was announcing at the time was the beginning of the end, but I did not have the insight to predict this problem.

Here's the genius of the show: office life is absurd! I work in a church office and I can still say that office life is absurd. You spend hours and hours around these people and yet barely know them. You get glimpses into their lives by what they put up on their walls or the kind of clothes they wear or the conversations that you might have with them, but for the most part you have office type relationships: awkward conversations at the copier, questions on expense reports, exchanged emails void of personality, and the occasional conversation about the weekend.

The first two seasons of The Office highlighted this absurdity with genius. Michael Scott was the one character who didn't seem to get that office friends are not really your friends. They are who you work with and then you don't spend your free time with them. Now, church office work is different, but serving on a large church staff there is some serious truth to that. I will never spend time with some of the staff at Asbury, and that is fine. I will pass them in the halls and say hello and try to think of something else to saw while we both realize that we don't really know anything about each other except for what we do.

Jim kissed Pam. We saw more of just a glimpse into their personal lives at that point, which is all an office mate might get. We saw into the depths of their feelings. We saw a part of them that they hadn't shown anyone else. We saw beyond their shallow office self, and saw what they really desired and hoped for- things you would never really see in your officemates.

Now the show didn't unravel all at once. Season 3 was still pretty good, but it was getting increasingly personal. The saving grace in season 3 was the downsizing and the mixing of new officemates that we didn't yet know and getting a glimpse into their lives. Season 4 and 5 have all been all about personal relationships, not office relationships. Where has the absurdity of office life gone?

Jenna Fischer in an interview on NPR said that when she auditioned for the show she showed no personality. Her audition was a "job interview" in character for a receptionist job. She gave one word answers and appeared very disintersted. Hence, Pam. Work Pam is exactly like this. She hates her job, is engaged but you get the feeling that he is a loser, and is bored in life. All of this you get pieced together through work Pam. I have no idea what real Pam is like. However, now there is no work Pam. She is gone. And I haven't laughed at her character since work Pam disappered.

If you watch season one of The Office it is just like the Brittish version. Maybe season 6 needs to be just like season 4 of the Brittish version as well: cancelled.