As a kid I used to read those horrendous/disturbing/hilarious "Chick Tracts" - those, little cartoon tracts that express some of the most extreme Fundamentalist theology out there; e.g. Catholics aren't really Christians and the Pope is the Anti-Christ, role-playing games are a recruiting tool for full blown witchcraft and Satan worship, "Christian" rock musicians have sold their soul to Lucifer, STDs are God's punishment for having sex outside of marriage, etc. Even back then I knew there was something not quite right about their theology.

Anyhow, maybe you've seen this one that deals with the End Times and the Rapture:









Well postmodern philosopher/writer/iconoclast Pete Rollins just recently took this whole theme and created a parody version of a Chick Tract, but with a very different message.



Unfortunately the whole tract is not up online yet (though you can see a few panels here), and currently the only way to get a copy is in person from Pete (which Julie managed to do this past weekend at a conference they were both speaking at). However Pete did post the basic text of it online and I've copied it below. Read it all the way through to get to the twist at the end.
Just speaking personally, I love Pete's twist on this dispensationalist doctrine. I grew up with this kind of eschatology - indeed, until I got to college I had never even heard there were any other beliefs about the end times, nor that "the Rapture" was an extra-biblical concept invented by an English sectarian in the mid-1800s - and while it's been a long time since I've held to those beliefs (not since a former pastor introduced me to preterism), I don't think I realized until reading Pete's tract just how self-serving and uncompassionate the theology of Rapture truly is. It's all about escape - about leaving behind a world of suffering people so that all us Christians can go relax and party in heaven while our friends and neighbors and loved ones are stuck down here to endure hell on earth. But what in the world could that sort of message have to do with the Christian gospel about a Suffering Servant who came down from heaven to live among us and offer to help bear our burdens? What does it have to do with the message this Suffering Servant proclaimed about God's will being done "on earth as it is in heaven", and NOT "may we escape this earth to go live with God in heaven"? I love Pete's message that it is those who care more about the suffering and injustice in this world than they do about escaping it to be with God that are actually closest to God's own heart. To me that's what it really means to be a follower of Jesus, the Suffering Servant.

Anyhow, I hope these tracts become available for bulk-order soon. I think it's a message that needs to get out there, and I for one will be more than willing to hand them out on street corners or leave them at restaurants in lieu of a tip in order to help spread the good news. (Just kidding about that last bit though. I would be willing to take them around to a few fundamentalist churches though and slip them into the tract rack when they're not looking. ;)

Labels: eschatology, Peter Rollins, Rapture

I'm likely overgeneralizing here, but why does it seem like whenever I point out what I see as the bad behavior of conservatives (whether theological or political) one of the first responses I get is usually "Well, your side does it too!" I can't recall how many times I've said something here about the close-mindedness of evangelicals for instance (which after all, is my own tribe), only to have someone respond, "Yeah, well, mainline liberals aren't any better." Or the number of times I've posted something about the dirty politics of the Republicans on Facebook, only to have someone reply, "Well, the Democrats do the same thing."

There are a number of things that bother me about this response:

1) It doesn't actually deal with the issue at hand. It's an evasion tactic that shifts the focus of debate from whether or not said behavior is actually acceptable, to "who started it". As such, it seems like basically a way of avoiding responsibility for one's own actions. So what if the other side does it? Does that thereby excuse your side from doing it too? Do two wrongs make a right? It's especially ironic when conservatives do this. I mean, aren't they supposed to be all about "personal responsibility", not just passing the buck?

2) The "your side does it too" response falsely assumes that I am actually on the "other side". This is not a safe assumption, whether theologically or politically. For instance, while I may be "post-evangelical", evangelicalism is still my heritage and the tribe I most easily identify with, so when I point the finger at the short-comings of evangelicals, it's not pointed at "them" so much as "us". And to be sure, I'm definitely not standing on the side of the mainline "liberals" either. Just because I've moved somewhat beyond evangelicalism doesn't mean I've therefore become a mainliner. That has become abundantly clear to me the more time I spend at my mainline Presbyterian seminary. I respect, love, and am intrigued by my mainline brothers and sisters here, but in many ways I still feel like an outsider looking in. So when folks tell me that "the mainliners do it too", my first thought is "Great, so what? I'm not a mainliner so what does that have to do with me?"

Likewise with politics, just because I no longer identify with the Republicans (though at one point in my life I was, literally, a card-carrying member) doesn't mean I therefore am a Democrat. I'm just as happy to criticize their antics as well (as I did, for instance, just the other day when I posted a Facebook complaint about how the Dems need to just let this Joe Wilson thing just drop.) Thus, when folks respond "The Dems do it too!" again my response is "Yeah? So what? They suck too. But shouldn't you be worried about your own side?"

Of course, I'm sure some might wonder why, if I don't consider myself either conservative or liberal in either of these spheres, why my critiques are usually directed primarily at the conservative side (which, I'll freely admit, they typically are). The answer is because, as I said above, the conservative side of things is where I come from and what I know. I can critique evangelicals because in some ways I still am one. And I can criticize Republicans because not too long ago I was one. However, not having ever been a mainliner, nor a devoted Democrat, I have a harder time pointing out their faults simply because I'm not as familiar with them. Indeed, it feels somewhat unfair and inappropriate for me to criticize them without fully understanding them. It's the whole "nobody better criticize my momma except me" thing. When you're part of (or have been part of) the family, you have a right to point out its faults. But when you're an outsider (and always have been), one has an obligation to understand before critiquing. (Which is one of the reasons I'm here at a mainline Seminary - in order to understand what makes mainliners tick so that I can better understand the critiques of my mainline Emergent friends.)

Anyhow, I'm sure I'll get flamed for this post, though of course it would be extremely ironic if the response to it was "well, liberals use this same evasion tactic too!" So let me be the first to say it, yes of course they do it too, and more than that, I'm sure I've done it too at times - I'm certainly not perfect. So why don't we all commit to dealing with the actual issues from now on, and not try to avoid seeing them in our own side (whichever side that is) by only ever pointing them out in the other. Let's all agree that "well, your side does it too", is never a valid counter-argument, especially when you haven't yet dealt with the fact that your own side is also doing it.

Labels: politics, theology

I'm in a class on Dietrich Bonhoeffer this semester at Seminary. I've encountered Bonhoeffer before in undergrad, and to be honest, I'm having some of the same issues with him this time around as I remember having then. I'm currently reading Life Together, and to be honest, in some places his thinking is just too dichotomistic, too either/or, too church vs. world for my taste. (Though our lecture in class today explained that a lot of this probably has to do with the fact that he's a Lutheran, which, according to H. Richard Niebuhr anyway, tends to think in these paradoxical dichotomous terms quite often.)

On the other hand, at many points he also nails things right on, and I appreciate some of his psychological insight into community dynamics. Today the thing that struck me the most was his advice about listening as one of the chief tasks of ministry. He writes:

Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of live for the brethren is learning to listen to them.... Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.

How true this is! I know it's one of the biggest things I struggled with as a pastor, and continue to struggle with to be honest. There are so many times when I just want to dominate a conversation, and times when I have to consciously, deliberately keep my mouth shut or force myself to ask the other person a question so as not to let myself do that. And (having pointed the finger first at myself, I feel slightly better pointing it at others as well), I can't tell you how many other pastor's I've known that just love to hear themselves talk and will barely let you get a word in edgewise. There was the time in Yorkville, for instance, when we were just starting off on the church plant and I was trying to meet with all the local pastors. One of them took me out to lunch, but didn't ask me a single question about our plant the whole time. He spent the entire time telling me all about their church and how he had single-handedly grown it from 50 people to 800 people in the past five years. I literally don't think I said more than two or three sentences the entire conversation.

And it's not just that one guy (who admittedly, probably had some ego issues). Even pastors that I've known well and highly respect were not always very good listeners and almost never asked questions. They were very passionate about their things, and very eager to share all about them with me, but never got around to asking about my passions. And what concerns me is that I see this same tendency in a few of my classmates at Seminary too. There are a great group of people here, and I love all of them, but there are more than a few who can be so excited and passionate about what they're into, that they rarely let others into the conversation, and they almost never ask questions of others. This is a problem for folks who are going ministry and wanting to lead churches. If they can't learn to listen now, how will they be able to do it as pastors?

Anyhow, anyone who knows me knows how often all this is true of me as well, so I don't say this in judgment, but just as a caution to anyone who wants to go into ministry and as a reminder to myself - learn to ask questions and learn to listen.

Labels: Bonhoeffer

Big changes have been afoot at Emergent Village over the past few months, and Julie and I have both been an active part of them (especially Julie). This letter was sent out a few days ago (along with this video) to the friends of Emergent Village, detailing the new structure of Emergent Village, as well as its renewed vision and hope for the future.

Greetings!

You may remember back in April that a number of people invested in Emergent Village gathered in Washington, D.C., to discuss the future of this conversation. In May that group of 24 shared our stories from the weekend and expressed our hopes for what is to come. With the previous EV leadership ready to step down, this was a prime opportunity to take stock of where Emergent Village has been over the past decade. Over the past few months those of us who gathered in D.C. have been discerning carefully and thoroughly where God is calling us together. Though we are by no means finished dreaming for the future of the Village, here’s our summary of the process thus far.

In our recent conversations we distinguished four recurring emphases to guide the way we structure the Village: collaboration, distribution, transparency and localization. We want to hear what you are doing, connect you with others, open up channels of communication between diverse voices, and highlight the powerful and creative places of emergence happening in our backyards. And guess what? All of them involve YOU.

Emergent Village has always centered on relationships that find their common ground in seeking new, creative and sustainable ways of following Jesus, and that create glimpses of the present and coming Kingdom. As we move ahead, we want to continue to create intentional means of connecting people. We’ve been describing this intentionally relational space as the Village Green. The Village Green will take on many forms: gatherings and events, local cohort meetings and conversations, book groups, web resource sharing, news updates and more. In all instances, the Village Green is a generative environment where missional friendships are nourished.

For the Village Green to flourish, it needs YOU to ignite that generative energy at the local and grassroots level. The Village Green is open for planting seeds, throwing parties, living justly, discussing new ideas, connecting with new people, creating music and art and poetry, and yes, even sitting around discussing theology. As a way of encouraging, organizing and advancing these efforts, we’ve created eight working groups around the things we are most passionate about. A number of Villagers have already found their way to these groups and have started conversations about what the future of the Village Green looks like from there. And now it’s your turn to do the same. This is YOUR Village. We invite you to jump in on one or more of these groups by contacting the team point person(s) and contributing to the planning, the dreaming and the doing. If you think we’ve missed something or just feel like adding something new, let us know by contacting any of the people listed below.

Here are the working groups:

Arts: The Village has always been a place of creativity, and we want to continue in that direction by supporting, networking and highlighting artists of all kinds in the Village. If you would like to help foster arts on the Green, contact Troy Bronsink (troybronsink@mac.com) or Makeesha Fisher (makeesha@gmail.com).

Cohorts: In many ways, cohorts are the heart of the Village. This is a great on-ramp for people to get involved in the conversation, make new friends and discuss new ideas. If you want to help organize and resource our network of cohorts, contact Sarah Notton (sarahnotton@gmail.com) or Mike Clawson (mike.clawson@gmail.com).

Communications: Our relationships will only be as strong as our communication. So, a team of folks have been invited to steward our venues of communication to make sure that they are open, consistent, and empowering others. There will plenty of ways to help us spread the word around the Village and beyond. Already you’ll notice the fresh look and feel of the Emergent/C. If your gifts might serve this team, contact Tim Snyder (tksnyder@gmail.com)

Events: As a generative friendship, Emergent Village hopes to promote face-to-face interaction around compelling and creative ideas through a number of events. It has been part of our practice in the past to encourage Villagers to attend at least one event per year to sustain and grow relationships. If you want to help dream and implement future events, contact Randy Buist (randybuist@comcast.net) or Anthony Smith (postmodernegro@gmail.com).

Justice: One of the clear themes that came out of our time together in April was our common desire to see justice embodied in our communal life together and fostered in our individual lives, and to bring more stories of justice to the table. If you want to help foster our emphasis on justice, contact Kelly Bean (bean.kelly@gmail.com) or Wendy Johnson (Wendy.J@episcopalmn.org).

Resources: The Village Green is a great place to share ideas, and a wonderful place of conversation for Jesus Way followers to find encouragement and support. Through articles, books, podcasts, and lots of other mediums, we are all invited to share our collective wisdom for the greater good of the Kingdom. Contact Mike Stavlund (mikestavlund@gmail.com) or Brittian Bullock (brittianbullock@gmail.com) to help resource the Green.

Village Council: To help coordinate the efforts between these eight areas and to encourage the conversation even further into this next season of Emergent, the group from D.C. selected six people to serve on the new Village Council. The Village Council also makes up the Board of Directors for EV’s non-profit purposes and will handle some of the organizational necessities of EV. VC members will serve no more than two consecutive years. This year, the Village Council members are: Melvin Bray (melvinbray@gmail.com), Troy Bronsink (troybronsink@mac.com), Julie Clawson (julieclawson@gmail.com), Dwight Friesen (quest@scn.org), Eliacin Rosario-Cruz (eliacin@gmail.com) and Danielle Shroyer (danielle@journeydallas.com). How we choose future Village Councils is still yet to be determined, but we look forward to inlcuding more of you in this process down the road.

Web: The EV website and other digital media venues provide a virtual space for the Village Green in between our face to face encounters. The web also provides access to resources and offers a place of connection for newcomers. If you have ideas about supporting our virtual Village, contact Jon Irvine (jonirvine.com@gmail.com) or Michael Toy (the.michael.toy@gmail.com).

Thanks to ten years of dedication, passion, and vision, the soil on the Village Green is rich. We’ll do all we can to create and maintain this generative space because we are convinced that we’re far better together than we are apart. After all, that’s the definition of emergence—the collective becomes more than simply the sum of its parts. And isn’t that what this Kingdom is all about? So, fellow Villagers, we have only one question for you: What will YOU do on the Village Green?

Sincerely,
Danielle Shroyer, Melvin Bray, Troy Bronsink, Julie Clawson, Dwight Friesen, and Eliacin Rosario-Cruz

Labels: Emergent Village, emerging church

I found this video to be rather inspiring:



Basically the video is about being the change we want to see in the world by pledging to do simple, practical things to make the world a better place - things like helping at a food pantry, smiling more, giving to Unicef, buying a hybrid, or conserving water. This is what I found to be inspiring - it's an important reminder that each of us can do something to help others, no matter how big or small.

The video also has a slight political overtone as well, since it begins with a quote from President Obama, and has a couple of pledges about "being of service to Barack Obama". It was these aspects of the message that led parents in the Salt Lake City area to protest it being shown at an elementary school assembly (the article about this is how I encountered the video in the first place). Personally, I agree that it probably shouldn't have been shown in a public school context. And I have to admit that I too was a little uncomfortable with the pledges to be of service to Obama. While I generally like our President and (mostly, though not entirely) agree with his agenda, I'm not simply going to blindly follow wherever he leads without question. Besides which, I also agree with the critic in the article who pointed out that Obama is here to serve we the people, not vice versa. If they had pledged (as JFK exhorted us) to be of service to our country, that would be less problematic. But of service just to one man? I'm not down with that.

However, that's not all the protesting parents took issue with. They also went on to decry some of the other pledges as "leftist propaganda". For instance, as the article notes:

Gayle Ruzicka, president of conservative Utah Eagle Forum, said the video was blatantly political. She said other offensive pledges [besides ones not to give the finger while driving, and to replace one's obnoxious care with a hybrid] included... pledges to not use plastic grocery bags and not flush the toilet after urinating.

"It's very inappropriate to show a radical, leftist propaganda piece that political to children," Ruzicka said. "If parents want their children to learn about those things and do them in the home, wonderful, fine, but it's not the place of the school to show a one-sided propaganda piece to children without parents knowing about it."

Cieslewicz said such values should be decided in the home, not at school.

"They shouldn't be troubling our youth with the woes of the world and making them feel like we're in slavery or they have to worry about how many times they flush the toilet or if they have a plastic water bottle," Cieslewicz said, referring to pledges in the video to "end slavery."

These complaints I have much less sympathy for. Issues like energy and water conservation, and especially something like ending modern day slavery should not be seen as partisan political causes. These are things that should concern any responsible citizen and moral human being. Is it "leftist propaganda" to say that we should take care of God's creation? Is it "leftist propaganda" to declare that slavery is a moral evil and should be eradicated? Are these people so deeply entrenched in the culture wars that they can't bring themselves to support any cause that they perceive to be in any way associated with "the left", no matter how self-evidently righteous it is? Is it really more important for your side to "win", than for you to help millions of slaves go free?

At any rate, check this video out. It has a great message, even if it takes a couple of missteps. On a personal note, Emma was looking over my shoulder as I was posting it to my Facebook profile, and she insisted on watching it. Afterwards (and after I explained to her what a "pledge" was), she decided that she wanted her pledge for making the world a better place to be that she would say "I love you more". That, to me, was even more inspiring than the video. :)

Labels: Obama, politics

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I got Warren Cole Smith's A Lover's Quarrel with the Evangelical Church in the mail. The title had intrigued me, and I wondered what kind of issues Smith would raise, and whether they'd be at all similar to my own quarrels with evangelicalism. I didn't look much closer at the book beyond the title, and once I did, it quickly became apparent that Smith's complaints were not too likely to mirror with my own. My first clue was the fact that Smith is a regular contributor to WORLD magazine, which is kind of like a print media version of Fox News for the Christian world. The second clue was the list of endorsers, which included several individuals, Dr. Michael Horton and Dinesh D'Souza for instance, with whom I have significant theological and philosophical disagreements. Nonetheless, I was still intrigued enough to keep reading. Besides, it's always a good idea to expose oneself to differing viewpoints on a regular basis.

What I found, is that I did in fact share a number of Smith's concerns about contemporary evangelicalism, but for very different reasons, and with very different ideas about the necessary solutions. Oddly enough, at times it even left me wanting to defend some of the same evangelical practices that I would be likely to critique in other contexts (the "seeker-friendly" mega-church movement for instance.) Smith's main "quarrels" center on the contemporary evangelical sub-culture. He identifies what he sees as five main problems:

1) Its disconnection from Christian history or tradition and with little vision for the future (what he calls the "new provincialism", a term he borrows from poet and essayist Allen Tate).
2) A "triumph of sentimentality", by which he means what he thinks has been an overemphasis on God's love and mercy to the exclusion of God's power and judgment, or human sinfulness.
3) The Christian-industrial complex, which he sees as corrupting true Christian community with marketing and money.
4) "Body-count evangelism", which he blames on the legacy of 19th century evangelist Charles Finney and sees as sacrificing depth of discipleship for the sake of higher numbers of superficial converts.
5) What he calls "the great stereopticon", by which he mainly means television, though he would also include most other forms of visual media, and which he thinks undermines God's "preferred medium" of communication, i.e. words.

It should be said that Smith admits right up front that he is writing for "theologically conservative, evangelical" Christians, so I really can't fault him when I just flat out disagree with some of his assumptions about the way things ought to be versus the way things are. He's not writing for someone like me. That said, I found that on at least a few points (especially his critique of the Christian-industrial complex and some aspects of his critique of body-count evangelism) I did agree with his assessment of what was wrong. I just didn't buy into his assumptions about why they were wrong, or how things ought to be instead. It's hard to summarize all the ways in which this was the case, but I guess I could just say that his approach was a bit too conservative, Calvinist, dogmatic, and generally negative towards anything new for my taste.

And, to be honest, on a number of points I really felt like he was overstating his case against contemporary evangelicalism, and failing to note that a lot of the current trends (e.g. contemporary worship music, seeker-sensitivity, grace-oriented preaching, visual and dramatic arts in worship, innovative ministry methods, attempts at cultural relevance, etc.) that he criticizes are themselves reactions to and corrections for even bigger problems in the traditional churches that contemporary evangelicalism has evolved out of (e.g. stale and lifeless worship, a ghetto-mentality in churches that turned off newcomers and seekers, an over-emphasis and on moralism and judgmentalism to the exclusion of the "good" part of the "good news", etc.) Reminding myself of this actually made me more sympathetic towards contemporary evangelicalism than I typically am. In this regard the book felt even more negative and critical than many of us emergent types often get accused of being. Whereas most emergents want to take the good and leave the bad from the evangelical world, for Smith (with the exception of a few positive examples he lifts up at the end) it seemed like it was almost all bad - like evangelicalism had taken a wrong turn shortly after Jonathan Edwards, and has been in a downward spiral ever since.

However, while this book certainly isn't targeted towards and emergent audience, I have a feeling that it will have a certain appeal to those in the anti-institutional, organic church/simple church stream of the conversation, and especially those who resonate with guys like Frank Viola or George Barna. For those who are deeply disillusioned with the hype and marketing and consumerism of the evangelical sub-culture, or who have been burned-out or repulsed by the superficiality of the mega-church world, this book will speak to those issues. Personally though, I was not impressed, and I found the "positive vision" he tried to cast in the last few chapters to be rather scattered and exceedingly thin (it basically comes down to church planting).

For a much more thorough critique of these same sorts of ills (from a pastor and scholar, as opposed to a journalist), I'd instead recommend my friend Dave Fitch's book The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies. While I don't always agree with Dave either, I find his take on all this to be much more nuanced and well-argued (not to mentioned geared towards postmoderns like myself) than Smith's.

Labels: book reviews

We just got the actual copy of Julie's book here at our house tonight. It's real! We can hold it in our hands. So excited!



BTW, while it's still on pre-order mode at Amazon, it looks like you can already order it directly from the IVP site if you are so inclined.

Labels: Everyday Justice, Julie