Young Adults and Health Insurance

Sunday's Tulsa World reported this story: Young Adults And Health Insurance. Basically, young adults (here defined by ages 18-32) are one of the largest groups of people not currently enrolled in any sort of health insurance. As the government becomes more and more concerned about the uninsured, one way some states are attempting to solve the problem is by extending the time children can be enrolled on their parent's health insurance all the way to 29 or 30 years old.

I don't understand why this plan would need to be in effect. I don't understand, and yet I do. There is an ever increasing lengthening of adolescence in our culture. A generation ago, adulthood began somewhere between 18-22. Two generations ago it was definitely 18. Three generations ago, functional adulthood may have begun even earlier that 18 for some people. But with my generation, adulthood is not beginning now until 30, 35, and maybe even 40, remember the movie Stepbrothers?"

I am continually amazed by the number of people who move back in with their parents after college or are dependent on their bills (or some of their bills) being paid for by their parents after college. I understand that there is also an "invincibility" thought out there for young adults not on health care, but why are some of us still dependent on their parents for their cell phones? I also understand that there are special cases where people need help from their parents (like grad-school students), but this dependency is much deeper than those who are currently in grad school.

I wonder what the spiritual implications are to this longevity of adolescence?

I see one major implication: My generation (I was born in 1981) has a messed up view of responsibility. Our is a generation yearning for social responsibilty and social justice, and yet I see so little personal responsibility.

For instance, many of us seem to live with the understanding that our financial situation should be on par with what we had while still being dependent on our parents. We forget that many of our parents had to struggle to achieve financial success (And there is a whole other conversation of whether Boomers really have financial success with their rampant materialism and lack of savings). We have a sense that we are entitled to have new technology, big tvs, nice houses, expensive cars (even if they are green), etc. So, there are many of us who cannot afford health insurance (hence the reason I'm writing this). There are also many of us who cannot afford to give to charity. I wonder though if these same people have iPhones, drive cars under 5 years old, have 40 inch + tvs. For Christians, this materialism is a grave signpost of irresponsibility. I see a generation that desperately wants to make a difference in the world, but is shying away from really engaging the social morals that the Boomers hold dear.

It seems that, for many, materialism is the god we serve while hoping not to lose our soul in the process. Eventually, this is going to catch up with us. As Christians, we need to repent of this materialism and learn through budgeting, giving, and responsible spending to use money to serve God, not serve money actively and God passively.

I see this lack of responsibility at the churuch a lot. We need people to step into leadership and service yet for some reason we are still dependent on the Boomers to lead. This last Sunday, we had a prayer vigil sign up to pray for the students on mission this next week. The response from those may age was pitiful. Why? We all know that people will get prayed for, but we are waiting for someone else to do it. Why?

I know I've been overly harsh here, but I'm very concerned over what I see developing. At the same time, though, I see great hope. I see a generation that is concerned with the earth, concerned with social justice, concerned with urban revitalization, and many who are giving up careers to work with the poor both here and abroad. This last paragraph should have been expanded, but this is already a long post.

The UMC and Easter hope

Because of some conversations I've been having lately and because of a story out of Wichita of a young United Methodist Church leaving the denomination I have been wondering what the viability is of our denomination and what will it take for us to achieve viability once again.

I feel that I am often living in the tension of two worlds. One is the institutional life I experience as a young pastor in the United Methodist Church. I have dreams and hopes for the church that she would reach out again and be a vital witness to my generation. I feel that her best days are behind and I wonder how long it will be until either schism or a lack of pastoral leadership finally dries up the wells of the UMC. This leaves me feeling defeated and despairing.

But there is another side. A hopeful side. A side that is influenced by Easter.

I get that churches come and go, and that this is also true of denominations. But I also have this inner hope that is part of the core of my life. A hope that when I see death, I also have to see life.

I see that Jesus deeply loves his church, his bride. This is true for the church universal, and also for the church specific (both local and denominational). There has never been a time when the church got it right, but in the midst of our failure Jesus has always renewed us. We as a denomination have bought into a lot of lies, we've missed it. But as people leave our denomination and we lost voice and influence with my generation, what about Easter? If there is one thing resurrection teaches us it is hope and pray for God to move still yet.

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.