In this vein, two recent popular press articles on sabbath (though they didn’t call it that) are well worth reading.

In the NY Times, Pico Iyer writes on “The Joy of Quiet,” discussing exclusive resorts that offer the allure of NO Internet or cell phone service. Particularly striking was Iyer’s visit to a Benedictine monastery where he met a MTV employee who brought his son on trips there to get away from it all.

In Slate, Katie Roiphe reflects in “Can We Really Unplug: The illusion of Internet freedom” on the popular Freedom software that locks you off the Internet for the length of your choosing.

(I’ve written on sabbath and technology in previous posts including Sabbath 2.0 and Saturday: Secular Sabbath or Christian Cop-Out?”)

Interestingly, in the church circles I observe, teaching and preaching about sabbath-keeping has gone out of style. The positive read of this is a healthy response to an over-zealous piety that can come with too much emphasis on keeping sabbath. The negative possibility, however, is that in a society where culture is about more-and-more-faster-and-faster, the church has neglected its task of preaching about the joy and benefits of practicing sabbath (and its task to acknowledge the struggles related to it as well).

So does the reflection Iyer and Roiphe’s piece (and Mark Bittman’s [here] before it) mark a cultural shift in which today’s main advocates of sabbath (or “quiet,” “rest,” “time away” whatever you call it) approach it from a spiritual but not religious perspective?

How can Christians — pastors and others alike — add their voice to the conversation in ways that welcome others? Off the top of my head, this process of dialogue comes to mind:

1. for Christians, and all, to acknowledge the challenge of today’s fast-paced uber-connected life and with it a desire by many to find periods of shelter from the hubbub
2. for Christians to listen to those who seek and find this sabbath rest from non-Christian perspectives including those that are totally secular, and those from other religious traditions
3. for Christians to plumb the depths of their own tradition and find a clarity as to what sabbath is all about (from the commandment to Jesus’ nuanced disregard for it)
4. for Christians to claim — in humility and while admitting the challenges — how living out their notions of sabbath is both faithful and life-giving for them

My instinct is that, when it comes to finding breaks from digital life — time to realign our lives towards what is good and right — the church has a lot to learn from those who practice “sabbath” without much notion of religion. I hope the conversation starts soon.

image by ivanmarn

When I served as a parish pastor, every week the bulletin reported how much money was collected during the previous week’s offering. It also noted “total offering collected for the month” in relation to the budget. Reporting these numbers was a tradition in our congregation and is common in this area, but I always felt a little uncertain about this practice.

On the one hand, it’s really helpful for members to know the state of the church’s budget. Noting as much each week might also remind the less assiduous folks to bring their pledges. But on the other hand, I wondered what that line in the bulletin communicated to visitors, especially those without much money. We didn’t report each week how many times we served Jesus, or fed the hungry, or glimpsed the Kingdom. We reported how much money we collected, or not.

Numbers matter, but they’re not the point. Interpreting numbers can get pretty tricky pretty fast.

I recently read with great interest an article on the Online Conference Dashboard instituted by Bishop William Willimon of the Northern Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. Each Monday pastors supervised by Willimon report statistics on the online “dashboard” about membership, attendance, baptisms, professions of faith, outreach (people serving), outreach (people served), and apportionment dollars paid. Willimon checks out the stats each Tuesday, but it’s all public. You can see the reports here. It’s no great surprise that the approach has reportedly generated its fair share of controversy (though Google turned-up relatively little).

As a mission developer, I make monthly online statistical reports to supervisors at the national church, but the questions are such that I can’t imagine the data is any help whatsoever in interpreting our ministry at The Project F-M. As a former student of Florida’s schools where the statewide standardized test (the FCAT instituted before No Child Left Behind) is often the tail wagging the dog, I have a natural aversion to bureaucrats and statistics. But…

But when people ask how our ministry is going, I often say how many people attended our last event. But when I give my monthly report to our Board, I dutifully report exactly who I met with the previous month. And, if we ever were to the point where someone wished to be baptized, you better believe I’ll take note.

So though I admit a natural skepticism towards Willimon’s dashboard, though I insist it tells too little a story, I do give the conference credit for taking note, for (literally) taking account of their ministry — and for doing so especially in the context of what was (but, I understand, is no longer) a declining conference in terms of overall membership statistics. And, sure, the speed, the public nature, and the frequency of the reports might help combat pastoral laziness and burnout.

[On a side note, I'm not convinced all churches need to grow numerically. I do think, though, they should support other new church plants and innovative ways of ministry even if they themselves are an ideal size.]

The Mary Jacobs article gives a good quick take on some other issues — not all positive –  associated with the dashboards, but the whole thing has me thinking: what questions might I like to ask other than the basic membership, giving, and service stats? What questions might I consider particularly telling for congregations? Here’s a few of my ideas, and I’d love to read some of yours in the comments.

Alternative Questions for the Conference Dashboards

• For how many of your enemies did you pray in the last week?
• How many times did you push yourself to an uncomfortable place for Jesus’ sake?
• How often did you find yourself closed-off to the Spirit doing a new thing?
• How many Bibles have you worn out from study?
• How often did you pray your Facebook feed?
• How often do you respond to a sermon with a specific question or action?
• Is your faith static, or are you pushing for new ideas, new activities, new insights of the Spirit?
• How often did you make numbers and statistics your idol?
• To how many people did you show and tell that Jesus Christ is Lord?

To tattoo or not to? That is the question. At least it is for many folks these days. Some estimate that approaching 40% of people under 40 have tattoos. While I don’t have one, many of my friends do — of crosses, words (in English, Hebrew, and Greek), Bible verses, logos. In fact, I almost feel left out. So, a few months back I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to write the study, “Tattoos. A Good Idea?” for The Thoughtful Christian. It’s recently out and available for download. Here’s a few reflections on the project.

First, I did some research via social media and as to why folks got their tattoos, and what significance they have. That blog post is here and still remains active. Overall, I was struck by the wide range of responses. For some people, their tattoo really helped their faith and even strengthened their discipleship. For others — even someone who got a celtic cross tattoo — it was more of a spur-of-the-moment thing.

Second, though it’s often said by some Christians that tattoos are bad or un-Christian, it’s difficult to make a direct Biblical argument for this. While Leviticus 19:28 includes a prohibition on tattoos, the prior two verses make the old-school purity code seem awfully odd (I have “rounded off the edge of my beard” (v. 27) many times without, in my view, offending God). Also, while 1 Corinthians 6:19 is often cited when it comes to purity of body — “your body is a temple of the holy spirit” — the context is actually Paul speaking not of an individual but of the whole community. So he’s saying, “you all together — your corporate body is a temple together” which makes tattoos on individuals sort of beside the point.

Third, I have to admit to before researching for this study I thought of tattoos as a modern phenomenon. I was way wrong. Tattoos have been around for thousands of years and are present in cultures all around the world. Perhaps tattoos are gaining popularity in the 2010s as opposed to the 1980s, but they’re by no means a new trend.

Fourth, like sex and a few other off-limits social issues, I feel the church really does a disservice to its members if it doesn’t have forums to discuss contemporary issues like the growing prominence of tattoos. As I say in the study,

The church does not operate in a vacuum, so it is not immune from tattoos’ popularity. Many pastors have tattoos themselves, and tattoos are found on the bodies of many congregation members—some you might know about, and some that might surprise you. (For a little experiment, ask the pastor of your congregation to mention tattoos in a sermon. It’s amazing how many members shaking hands with the pastor at the door after worship will discuss—or even show—their own tattoos!)Tattoos, perhaps once seen as something unfit or unmentionable for church folk, are now fairly common and gaining acceptance.

It’s important that the church model healthy ways of reflection and dialogue about tattoos and other issues of cultural import.

Finally, it was interesting to reflect how I might have written this study differently were it for an adult group as opposed to youth. To be honest, I imagined youth to be more open-minded and willing to discuss other points of view than an adult group might be. If my imaginings were accurate, what does this say about adults who attend church and their willingness to consider differences both moral and aesthetic?

So, I hope you’ll check out the study. As I wrote, it’s designed to have youth explore questions from many sides and think of different perspectives so that they can discern how God is leading them, not simply say tattoos are good or bad, right or wrong. As the study shows, tattoos are not a black-and-white issues (and not just because they come in color too).

Shortly after I began blogging four years ago, I often found myself explaining what a blog actually was.  Many people, I found out, had heard of blogs but never actually read one.  These days, when someone finds out I’m a blogger, people are more apologetic than inquisitive.  “Oh, I should really do that, I know,” they’ll say, “I just don’t have the time.”  What a difference four years makes.

Jakub Krechowicz

I don’t actually think everyone should blog any more than I think everyone should have a dog or have a taste for cheese curds.  Yes, bad blogging can be narcissistic and reactionary.  Yes, blogging takes time that could be spent otherwise.  But as a pastor and pilgrim, I find blogging both feeds my soul and sharpens my skills for service.

In Bird by Bird, a fantastic reflective book on writing and life, Anne Lamott pens a chapter entitled “Looking Around.”  I first read the book for a seminary preaching class, our professor emphasizing the qualities of good writing for strong sermons.  Years later, upon becoming a regular writer beyond sermons, I still think of this chapter fairly often as it aptly describes an important element in my blogging and other writing: looking around.  Lamott writes:

Writing is about learning to pay attention and to communicate what is going on….The writer is a person who is standing apart, like the cheese in “The Farmer in the Dell” standing there alone but deciding to take a few notes. You’re outside, but you can see things up close through your binoculars. Your job is to present clearly your viewpoint, your line of vision. Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense. Then you can recognize others. (97-98)

Most good writing — including blogging — calls the writer to assess her place in the world and consider others.  It requires slowing down; thinking.  Good writing comes to those who wait.

Lamott’s image of the cheese standing alone rings true for me, because blogging and writing does take a certain apartness.  For me at least, I find that I must stand alone to look carefully at how we stand together.  That said, blogging is about making connections, connections between ideas and connections between people. Countless times, a comment on my blog will call me to reassess a perviously-held thought, or take me to another more considered position. Links and ideas posted on other blogs inform my writing, my preaching, and my daily life. Friendships with other bloggers — some of whom I’m met in person, many of whom I haven’t — enrich my life and deepen my community.

In brief: I blog so that I might live more faithfully.  You don’t have to if you don’t want to.  But I do hope, in whatever way works best for you, you can find practices that help you look around, that enable you to see the world with complexity, so that you might recognize others and the God who is working in all our lives, even now.

Additional Resources from www.TheThoughtfulChristian.com

• Travelling Mercies, by Anne Lamott
• Grace (Eventually), by Anne Lamott
• “Writing as Prayer: Journaling, Blogging, and Other Tools for Reflection,” by Lisa Nichols Hickman (Youth Study)
• “Journaling as a Spiritual Discipline,” by Delia Halverson (Adult Study)

1. The Presbyterian Outlook, an independent magazine reporting on issues of interest to the PC(USA), is looking for two new part-time employees. And yes, you can even work from the comfort of your own home! I know I’m not alone in my push, in the most amiable way, for the Outlook to refocus efforts on web presence and social media (yes, their site makes me want to pull my hair out). Well, the new Internet Content Manager Job will do just that. They’re also looking for someone to fill this CopyEditor Job Description. I’ve worked with the Outlook folk in the past and can recommend them as a classy organization filling a vital role in the denomination.
2. The Thoughtful Christian.com, a great portal for lesson plans and book deals, has recently expanded and launched a new blog: Gathering Voices. I managed to wrangle my way into the first group of regular bloggers, so Wednesdays my posts from Gathering Voices will be cross-posted back here. I’m excited to work with such an awesome group of bloggers — some young, some old, all smart — and I’m also quite happy that it’s less of a time commitment than my stint with the Century Blog. It’s live as of yesterday; my first post goes up tomorrow.
3. MinnPost.com, speaking of new ventures, is a newish effort in high-quality nonprofit journalism for “news-intense people who care about Minnesota.” Well, that’d be me!  I’ve followed them for a few months, and recently re-worked a post for them.  It appears today in their “Community Voices” section under the title, “The Minnesota breakfast crew vs. the Twitterati: Cherishing a sense of perspective.” Check out their site, though, not for my voice but for their new model of quality journalism.

The Christian Century

For several weeks, I’ll be regularly contributing to the CENTURY Blog, cross-posting here along the way.  Feel free to comment on either site (at least, that’s the plan for now).  I’m not quite sure how our partnership will affect the content of A Wee Blether, but I may be more churchy or pastoral at times and perhaps comment more often on recent news and cultural events.  No matter what, however, I want to be sure to keep my voice, however underdeveloped it might be.  And, I’ll pop up some posts here (of personal or local interest) that won’t fly at the CENTURY Blog. As always, let me know along the way how things are going.  So, stay tuned as a new adventure begins…

+ + +

from the CENTURY BLOG: From Other to Friend

Amy Frykholm posted yesterday about Muhammad Musri, the Muslim leader who met with Terry Jones and helped defuse last week’s Qur’an-burning situation. If more Christians and Muslims knew one another personally, the whole furor may not have occurred in the first place.

It’s a lot harder to adopt anti-Islam rhetoric when your family doctor is Muslim, or your daughter’s college roommate is Muslim, or your congregation has worked with a mosque to build a Habitat for Humanity house. Many of the troubling statements I’ve read in recent weeks—and heard in my pastoral ministry—would never have been said if folks simply got to know their Muslim neighbors. Conversations about Islam could shift from a focus on the unknown other to one on knowing one another better.

Recently, I’ve heard of many Christian pastors participating in interfaith services, posting supportive statements regarding Islam to their Web sites and teaching Sunday School sessions on Islam. NPR recently ran a great piece on “bridging the Christian-Muslim divide.” This is all positive and helpful, good steps on the journey from fear to understanding. But nothing beats personal relationships.

Have relationships or experiences with Muslims affected you personally? How can Christians promote positive relationships with our Muslim neighbors? How can churches help connect congregants to those of other faiths?

A few things about the new A Wee Blether:

And Friday night, at the General Assembly, the commissioners were tired, the energy level was low, and the most controversial items had already been considered. So, first a few funny recollections from the week:

• The Stated Clerk, Gradye Parson, has a suave-looking John Calvin bobble-head on his desk. I covet.
• Moderator Cynthia Bolbach’s fun sense of humor kept the assembly in good spirits throughout the week. Perhaps her best crack cams during the moderator election when she, and elder said, “Ministers going on tangents…who knew?”
• The chairs in the assembly hall, when scooted back or forth, sound like vuvuzelas. It’s hilarious.

More seriously, my read of the assembly is that it was a perfectly fine one, one that wrestled with tough issues conscientiously and sought the Spirit in its work. Many hugely important changes are proposed to the PC(USA) constitution, including the addition of the Belhar Confession to our Book of Confessions.

But, as I prepare to go back home, I’m also struck with a questioning sense about whether this formal, costly, somewhat unwieldy church structure is the most faithful way of conducting business at a national level. At 27, I’m too young to be a hardened cynic, but many times this week I thought, after a beautiful policy statement or theological document passed the assembly, “How much did we spend per word to make that document? And, how many Presbyterians – let alone others – will ever read it?” When I closed my eyes and listened to debate on the plenary floor, I wondered how much —really, how little— the basic way we govern ourselves has changed in fifty years.

Several folks, on both sides of theological divides, pointed out that if the rate of membership decline in the PC(USA) continues as it has in recent years, the PC(USA) will cease to exist in roughly 40 years. Sophisticated statisticians would surely add some complexity to that model, but even a simpleton can see we have a huge problem. So, I leave confused and saddened that the report of the committee on church growth and evangelism flew by so quickly, and with so little discussion.

Another systemic issue to raise my hackles this week was the fact that, in so many floor debates, we spoke to the surface-level of issues before us rather than to a deeper level, often the reason the issues were so controversial in the first place. For instance, our debate on sex and sexuality directly connected to many more pieces of business than the headline grabbers—ordination standards, marriage, and pension policies. But when such issues came up, we tended to argue in polity wonk language rather than actually talk about what was behind the arguments (e.g. the main motion and substitution motion regarding the General Assembly, Permanent Judicial Commission, the Bush case, and all the complexity). I’m all for our polity, but I’m also for truth telling.

This kills me at presbytery often as well, so maybe it’s just a bad Presbyterian habit: we argue over surface-level questions rather than converse about the real foundational issues underlying them that make the surface-level questions tricky in the first place. We are struck in a dualistic way of doing things – vote yes or no – one that gets us a “conclusion” when a majority votes, but really doesn’t solve a thing.

Next, just an observation without too much analysis: the Young Adult Advisory Delegates totally impressed us all this week, as usual. Our young people are extremely talented and fantastic church leaders. Also noteworthy is the fact that, on the big sexuality questions, they consistently voted more liberal than the assembly by MANY percentage points. If we don’t scare these youth away with our bickering, their minds don’t change, and they are somewhat representative of the young adults in the larger church, it’s difficult to imagine the hot-button sexuality questions not eventually turning more progressive (for want of a better word) in a few years’ time.

But here’s the thing, whether that scares you or excites you, it can lead us away from the point. I played a game with friends last night in which, before the evening assembly, we each chose key words for which to listen in the evening plenary. Each time that certain word or words were spoken, we took note, promising to donate a certain amount of money per word to our seminary. One of my friends listened for the phrase, “Jesus Christ.” Let’s just say she won’t be writing a big check.

So we continue the conversation. We continue our prayers that the Spirit might guide the church so that we might be more faithful, conduct our business more wisely, and make us good stewards of our gifts. General assemblies are our human attempt to do just that. I’m grateful God showed up, so grateful, but also I’m praying God’s got something new in mind real soon.

image by Erin Dunigan

The book is in ten parts, or ten questions. A few examples: What is the overarching story line of the Bible? Is God violent? What do we do about the church? Can we find a way to address human sexuality? How can we translate our quest into action?

McLaren believes the Christian faith is in the midst of a major overhaul. Perhaps every generation believes this, but I agree with McLaren that we are in a particularly transformative time. McLaren approaches his ten questions with a mix of his own intense and impressive Biblical exegesis and a grounding in what I would call the mainline progressive Biblical scholars. McLaren is one of these great authors that defies easy description. He’s a scholar for sure, but also an anti-establishment guy, an Evangelical who is excoriated by the right, a teacher and a pastor. Mostly, though, I think of McLaren as a communicator. He’s skilled at cutting through the rhetoric and getting his point across.

For instance, his chapter on the questions of the overarching storyline of the Bible does a splendid job of describing the problems of reading the Bible through the eyes of the Roman Empire and overly-simplified protestant theology. McLaren discusses the “six-line narrative” of Eden, Fall, Condemnation, Heaven, Salvation or Hell/Damnation and blows it out of the water as a faithful way to read the Bible. Quite right. But, to be honest, McLaren’s next chapter basically on what’s next, could basically be described as what I took from a center left Presbyterian seminary — the challenge to read the Bible on its own terms, the challenge to appreciate the non-literal intent of many of the writers and take them even more seriously “because they distill time-tested, multilayered wisdom — though deep mythic language — about how our world came to be what it has become (48). McLaren does a great job of expanding the Biblical approach he took as a young man, but to be honest, I don’t read his current approach as anything hugely new. Perhaps that’s because I’m only 27, so what McLaren is writing about is just sort of the water I’ve always drank.

Here’s a good snippet of what McLaren’s about:

Although few of us today are tempted to freeze our understanding of God in graven images, we may too quickly freeze our understanding in printed images, rigid conceptual ideals not chiseled in wood or stone but printed on paper in books, housed not in temples but in seminaries and denominational headquarters, worshiped not through ancient ceremonies and rituals but through contemporary sermons and songs (111).

McLaren’s big metaphors for the Bible that he uses in the work are the Bible as not a constitution, set and rigid with one meaning, but the Bible as community library where the community gathers its wisdom, discusses its future, centers its soul. Though I think some lawyers would quibble with his understanding of the constitution, the point is taken. The Bible is not and never has been about rigidity and simple “yes” and “no” directives, but it’s a book of books around which we gather, in which we rest and play, from which we live and serve.

McLaren concludes the book with a call to a final quest, the “quest to heal what we have so disastrously broken, the quest to unify and liberate what we’ve tragically divided and conquered, the quest to rediscover a larger more beautiful whole rather than pit part against part in deadly conflict” (232). This is not a small ball work, but a big honking call for a new kind of Christianity, heck a new kind of living and being with one another in creation. I’m all for it. I hope McLaren keeps the conversation going, for its the conversation on-going for practically all of my young adult life.

Related to all this, though, I am strongly considering disconnecting my blog from my facebook page. As I have it set up now, every post I put up here at A Wee Blether is automatically posted on my facebook wall as a note. Sometimes this is fine, but often the different genres bother me.

Sure, it’s subtle, but facebook is a way of connecting that I view as much quicker and more superficial than blogging. I’ll plop stuff on my facebook page without thinking twice, but I reflect a little longer before I post on the blog. I think of facebook as the conversation you have out the car window to someone walking by: “hi,” “beautiful day,” “how’s it going?” And blogging is like the conversations you have with more time and a more relational setting.

Originally, I think I connected the blog to facebook purely because I wanted the hits it might bring me. But, after blogging for going on three years, I’ve realized it’s not about the hits. Mostly, I blog for the positive personal gains — I do think it makes me a better person — but I do love comments too. And, actually, I think the facebook note feature of the blog actually cuts down the number of comments I receive on the blog. In a weird way, facebooking blog posts dumbs them down.

So, unless your comments change my mind, I think I’ll disconnect the connection from WordPress to Facebook. I may still put a link to particular posts on my facebook page, but I won’t automatically crosspost everything. Oh how the world is ever-changing.