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Friday free-for-all

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Adam J. Copeland

So much is swirling around my already taxed mind these days I can’t seem to pop out a traditional post, so here’s some bullets from the swirl:

  • The three state sanctioned executions this week greatly trouble me. Opposition to the death penalty is an issue deeply tied to my Christian faith, so much so that I admit my inability to understand those of differing perspectives. Lord have mercy.
  • I join the chorus of those surprised that none of the GOP presidential candidates expressed concern over the boos from the crowd at last night’s debate after a gay solider serving in Iraq. I won’t even begin to imagine the uproar if a Democratic candidate had advocated against a policy supported by top military officials and failed to give thanks for a soldier’s service to our country.
  • I enjoyed attending my first (ELCA) synod ministry conference at Fair Hills Resort recently. The three days for pastors in the region to meet, study, have sabbath, and learn from one another was a welcome respite from other tough tasks of ministry. I wonder if more Presbyterians might adopt a similar model of regional gatherings for pastoral support, encouragement, and rest.
  • Marci Glass, a pastor friend in Boise, Idaho recently posted on her decision not to sign any more traditional marriage certificates until she might also do so for same-sex couples. I deeply respect her position. I’ve never been a fan of pastors signing state documents in the first place.
  • I laugh every time Facebook changes and folks freak out, mainly because it so perfectly illustrates the struggle of many church leaders to bring about change in the church. That said, I do have one minor complaint regarding the recent changes: when working in a page I administer, I can no longer send a message to a group I’ve made out of personal friends. One can access groups Facebook automatically creates (such as friends from Fargo, ND) but not the Project F-M group I’ve lovingly groomed over the past six months. Oh well.
  • I enjoyed speaking recently at a presbytery event, leading workshops on the church and technology and giving the keynote, “The Ten Commandments 2.0″ FYI, I’m always up for speaking invites — especially on fun topics :)

image by Henk L

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Not quite the NY Times, but…

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Adam J. Copeland

The Presbyterian News Service published this article on our approach and developing new ministry in Fargo-Moorhead. Writer Erin Dunigan was a blast to work with. I’ve posted the first few words below, but if you want to read the full piece — or not pull out your magnifying glass, click on the picture for the full story (or here).

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Young adults are amoral heathens, but what’s new?

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Adam J. Copeland

This week’s Theology Pub, a gathering of 20/30-somethings The Project FM hosts at a local bar to talk about God and life, tackled the topic “Is my truth better than yours?” Though it came out a few days too late, David Brooks’ NY Times Op-Ed yesterday, “If it feels right” would have been great pre-reading.

Brooks builds his column on the work of Christian Smith and colleagues. Smith’s previous book, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults has been on my wish list for some time. Now I’ll have to add his latest as well, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood.

In his column Brooks opines that young adults these days apparently lack the wherewithal to speak about moral issues. As someone who hosts conversations for young adults to speak about moral issues, two responses immediately come to mind. One: young adults who attend Theology Pub absolutely love speaking about moral issues. Two: we are not particularly well versed in how to speak about them.

I could blame this all on standardized testing in grade schools. I could complain about colleges requiring too few philosophy and ethics courses (grad schools too, for that matter). I could lambast parents for not passing along resources for taking on moral subjects. But I won’t.

What I will do, however, is refuse to blame young adults themselves for not having been given the resources to take on moral questions — it’s not their fault that faith communities, schools, and parents failed them. Let me repeat that: it doesn’t do us any good to blame 20 year-olds for not having the moral sensibilities we wish they had. (And Brooks, by the way, does well to refuse to do so — mostly.)

I look forward to reading Smith’s book, but I’ll do so uneasily. When I somehow find the time to pick it up, I’ll do so with this question at the forefront of my mind: Is it that young adults truly have fewer moral resources with which to deal with moral questions than previous generations, or is it that today’s questions are so much more complex that young adults need more skills and understanding to just tread water in our consumeristic pluralized technologically-advanced globalized world?

After all, it’s much easier to teach and theologize that “murder is wrong” than it is to discuss unmanned drone strikes in remote border areas of Afghanistan/Pakistan during an unfunded “war on terror” lasting over ten years.

image by Linden Laserna

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On apples and oranges known as an Interfaith Spirituality Panel & Republican Presidential Debate

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Adam J. Copeland

This week I’ve found the juxtaposition of two evening events particularly striking. On Monday night, I attended an Interfaith Spirituality Panel of young women at Concordia College. Last night I watched (most of) the Republican Debate broadcast from the Reagan Library and Museum. The experiences could not have been more different.

  • At the Interfaith Panel the women spoke from their own experiences but did so while also seeking to gain understanding from others.
  • At the debate last night the politicians spoke about their own plans and rarely mentioned the wisdom of others.
  • At the Interfaith Panel the women were very interested in naming the difficulty they found distinguishing faith from culture, in separating their personal choices and discoveries from their experiences and upbringing.
  • At the debate the politicians focused a lot on what they did themselves to make it in the world, on how their own pursuits led — and will lead — to great success.
  • At the Interfaith Panel I glimpsed religious diversity — Atheism, Tibetan Buddhist, Christian convert to Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity (Lutheran). This diversity was welcomed and enjoyed.
  • At the debate the politicians’ religious diversity — to the extent it existed from Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Mormon — felt more like a liability than something to be welcomed and embraced.

Obviously the events were totally different contexts. They are difficult to compare. But here’s the thing. As much as I love a good debate — and I do, very much — I left the Interfaith Spirituality Panel uplifted but walked away from the broadcast of the Presidential debate downhearted. Surely this says plenty about my political persuasions. But, it also makes me wonder what those young college women grasped that those Presidential contenders didn’t.

image by Jeroen van de Sande

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Responding to Lillian Daniel’s “Spiritual but Not Religious” Column

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Adam J. Copeland

On airplanes, I dread conversations too, just as Lillian Daniel wrote in a August 31, 2011 UCC devotional column that is making its merry way around Facebook. But that’s where my agreement ends.

I understand Daniel’s piece was perhaps adapted from her long-form work on the subject, so I don’t want to be too harsh regarding just a few hundred words. I read Daniel’s fine book (and reviewed it here). She’s a fab pastor, I have no doubt.

That said, I found devotional column’s tone totally unhelpful — even out-of-touch — as it addressed God’s children who search for language to describe how the church has abandoned them. I feel called, when someone call oneself “spiritual but not religious” to respond with kind curiosity rather then righteous indignation.

Specific comments relating to Daniel’s “spiritual but not religious” assumptions:

  1. Really? An airplane? Would that be first-class or coach? I meet with people (young adults, mostly) every week who call themselves “spiritual but not religious.” They tend to be underemployed, live month-to-month, and are doing their best to find meaning in their tumultuous lives. Sure, the phrase “spiritual but not religious” needs some unpacking for pastors whose livelihoods depend on people’s public religiosity, but I’ve never heard it as “rebellion against the religious status quo.” Rather, the phrase is more a humble testimony that they just don’t seem to connect with fancy churches. And who can blame them?
  2. As opposed to what Daniel suggests, the “spiritual but not religious” folks I talk to yearn for community. I have not found one who wants simply to have “deep thoughts all by oneself” as Daniel accuses. What might be true, however, is that the community they seek isn’t offered at most mainline churches with our endowment funds and dress codes and judgmental matriarchs and patriarchs. You see, some “spiritual but not religious” folks sense a certain righteous attitude from these institutions (go figure?). Many were once burned by hugely negative experiences with the church and it’ll take the church reaching out — in love, not in snark — for healing to begin.
  3. God is working in the lives of the “spiritual but not religious.” I happen to believe they have a huge amount to teach the church about connecting to God, supporting true community, sustaining spiritual practices, and living out St. Augustine’s call for a “faith seeking understanding.” Daniel asks, “Can I spend my time talking to someone brave enough to encounter God in a real human community?” I say, Yes, feel free to do that in your church. But also be brave enough to listen to those encountering God in ways you don’t fully understand. Learn from them.

Church and society are both in pretty rough places these days. So please let’s lay off the snark and tune-up our Christian love for all — for those who use mainline labels to describe themselves and those who are “spiritual but not religious.”

image by John Nyberg

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Sing a new/old/tricky psalm to God

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Adam J. Copeland

 A Gathering Vocies post

This post comes to you live from Louisville, Kentucky where I’m attending a meeting of the Presbyterian Committee on Congregational Song (PCOCS). For several years now, PCOCS has met to select the contents, format, etc. of the next collection of Presbyterian songs and hymns – the next hymnal.

We’ve focused this particulary three-day meeting on the psalms, and I have a few reflections. First, a bit of history. The previous Presbyterian hymnal published in 1990 had many psalms set to music and contained in a particular section of the hymnal ordered by psalm number (rather than topical, ordered by use in worship, or some other arrangement). For a number of reasons the psalms, generally speaking, were the least sung and least popular section of the previous hymnal. This for a denomination whose roots are in psalm singing.

There are plenty of other reasons the psalms in the 1990 hymnal were less than popular – and we could certainly discuss whether popularity is the point – but I want to reflect briefly on a few other issues related to singing the psalms.

Singing a psalm from the Bible that has been set to music is singing someone else’s song as your own. This happens when singing any piece of music written by someone else, I suppose, but I feel it more strongly when I sing a psalm. Singing what God’s people have sung for thousands of years connects me to those people in a way singing a newly composed text doesn’t quite reach. And it also brings up some tricky problems when the messages of the psalms don’t fit into our neat theological categories today.

For instance, one psalm paraphrase we looked at had the phrase, “May God confirm your heart’s desire / and bring to fullness all your plans.” I found this psalm’s message curious because of how often we speak in Christian parlance today about following “God’s plan” but the psalm sings about God confirming our plans.

(By the way, since PCOCS works with texts with author’s names intentionally omitted I cannot cite them here which is fine because our work isn’t finished yet. So even if you somehow know the psalm I reference here, nobody knows whether it’ll be in the next collection. So please don’t freak out on me.)

Other psalms come up against other narratives of the Bible so that we can use the Bible as speaking different and sometimes conflicting messages at different times. This is obvious for any Bible reader, but seemed particularly tricky when working with psalms.

For instance, one psalm sets up how creation praises and responds to God then says, “None questions what you do.” But many of us do question God – which seems reasonable, right? And some of the psalms – a lot of the psalms – do the same thing!

Finally, some psalms get at the old challenge of works righteousness theology: “Those who trust the Lord are filled; all the good wrought by their labor / Is their gain, so God has willed.” Maybe this one gets at the challenge of simply explaining any theological concept in rhyming verse, but it struck me as particularly curious.

Though I’ve many more thoughts, I must cut this sort and run back to the meeting now. Unless I hurry, I’ll have to sing a song: “Please accept my apology / blogging stole such time from me.” Peace.

 

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Sermon: “Young Adult Jesus” Matt. 16:21-28

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Adam J. Copeland

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church
Fargo, N.D.
August 28, 2011

Young Adult Jesus

Matthew 16:21-28

 

Thank you for the invitation to worship with you all this morning. It’s always a joy to share a bit about what God is doing with young adults in Fargo-Moorhead and The Project F-M. So, I’m very grateful to be here at St. Mark’s….

Today’s gospel lesson from Matthew 16 is one of those head-scratchers. I mean, just a few verses before, Jesus praises Peter for identifying him as the Messiah. Jesus says to Peter, “Blessed are you” and he gives him a nickname — Rocky — proclaiming, “On this rock I will build my church.” … Continue Reading

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