The Early Church and Naperville

In our adult class on Sunday I am teaching a class on the early church – centering on the early church councils, asking how did we as a church get this way? This past week the topic was the First Council of Constantinople in 381 CE. I know it has the great possibility of being a snoozer but it has been fun. Partly because the material has been engaging with people like Maximus the Cynic (a truly great name) populating the stories.

One question has repeatedly risen, where do our beliefs come from? The popular and quick answer is the Bible, but when challenged to find those places in the Bible that support these fundamental beliefs they are a little fuzzy. Where in the Bible do we find the verses that support the incarnation or the concept of the Trinity and how the members in the Godhead interact with one another? Or if our members find the verses will they connect them in the manner which gives rise to what we have believed for thousands of years? What happens of they connect the dots and come up a heresy? How do they know what orthodox and what is not unless there is structure which guides them?

One such structure has been the creeds. Our church is very familiar with the Apostles Creed, not so much with the Nicene Creed and the pretty much clueless with the rest of them. This week we examine the Athanasian Creed which covered two pages. It is interesting to the class that the creeds keep getting longer. The shortest for them has been the Apostle’s. The others seem to be clarifying what the Apostle’s creed meant. They are reactions to the issues of the day. One member of the class said it reminded them of a personnel manual, you only change something when there has been a problem. The church has often been reactionary rather than pioneering in its theological development.

So we talk about Arianism or Gnosticism or Modalism, and how the creeds clarified beliefs to prevent heresies from cropping up. We talk about where do our beliefs come from and how do we support what we it is we believe? How is it we have consistency of faith from one church to another and from one region to another? And they are beginning to see that our faith requires the larger body to hold out what it is were believe, to guard against some of the doctrines that are cooked up in the mind of an individual. C. Michael Patton has a post on the exegtical process and that the esse ntial question is not what does the Bible say to you, but what does Bible say? While doctrine may have its limits, it does give us a framework and grounding to understand what it is we belief together.

I am not sure how long this class will last but as it does it has been a fascinating conversation in what believe and how got to where we are at this point in time.

Hello, is anyone there???

It has been at least three weeks and the site Covenantblogs.net is still just a screen of white.

Oh boys it is time to pay attention to it again or at least let those of us go there repeatedly know it is dead for real.

Oh boys...hello...anyone there???

Hmmm, we shall see.

Twitter anyone?

I have seen this image on a few of the blogs I keep track of and being the curious soul that I am, I decided to finally check it out. As you probably know Twitter is a social networking site that allows you to share whatever it is you are doing with whomever is interested. I have seen this as one of the sidebars and it has things like, got coffee at Starbucks, 3 hours ago. Drove into Chicago 2 days ago. My response to those side bars is usually okay so...what?

I tried to think what I would put into that little side bar. Went to 7-11 this morning...55 minutes ago. Working on the schedule 10 minutes ago. Drove to Plainfield one day ago. After a few minutes I was bored. I am not all that interested in what I have done and I am the one who did it! Either I lead a remarkably pathetic life or we are obsessed with useless information. Do you read those little things on blogs? Why? One reviewer call this the new killer app. Great - we can be bored to death.

Is this what relationships have become, watching/reading what people are doing in the minutia of their lives? Have we traded conversations for texting, interacting with virtual stalking? In this circumstance technology is not our friend. Grab a no.2 pencil and legal lad and write a letter and in detail describe your day and whatever else you want your friends to know about your life.

I can promise you and anyone else who cares, Twitter ain't happening here!

Prayer Room

During Holy Week we had a prayer vigil - 24/7. This wasn't the first time we have done this, in fact it is our third year. We have a great team who pulls this together each time and it is lead by our youth pastor. While all 168 hours were not filled close to 130 were. I call it a win.

Individuals and families signed up for an hour and universally they said they couldn't get through the room in that period of time. There were a multitude of stations encouraging people pray using all the senses. They could journal, paint, make beaded bracelets, sing or play music, pray over cards turned by the congregation. some signed up for over 4 hours. to place during holy week giave it an added power and joy.

Why One or the Other?

Maundy Thursday. Celebration of the Last Supper, washing of feet and the night Jesus was betrayed. We will have no service this evening. We are having a service tomorrow evening, Good Friday. We gathering with other churches and we celebrating the story of the crucifixion. But tonight there is nothing.


The reason is that our congregation will come for one or the other - but not two. How did we come to this conclusion? Experience. We have tried it in the past and you get a barely okay response from one and no response from the other. So we choose. This year because we have invited other churches to the Good Friday services, thus we chose not to have anything tonight.

But is that reason good enough? Is not observing both important enough to have both and help the congregation see essential nature of both? But to have two poorly attended events - what does that demonstrate? In "the old days" you could have both and were expected to have both. In fact Good Friday was three hours long beginning at noon with community churches gathering together and having 30 minutes sections. Businesses gave their employees time off to go to church. Maundy Thursday was for your church family. Naperville no longer resides in Christendom, we are an over scheduled, fast paced pagan community. To have people come to an event of our faith outside the norm of Sunday morning is now a victory. Add to all of this - spring break begins tomorrow for many school which means a mass exodus, and the NCAA tournament has begun. And if you think that last one is irrelevant check again.

I miss the Maundy Thursday worship, sharing communion with the saint. But I also celebrate the excitement we have concerning the gathering for Good Friday. Will we ever do both again? I don't know, but right now the answer for this year is no.

Enough Already!

I made a mistake today. I listen to conservative talk radio. Now I am generally a conservative. I tend to vote Republican. I don't agree with the party every time but over all I seem to fall on that side of the fence.

But I have had it with the conversation over Barak Obama and his pastor Jeremiah Wright. This is the most ridiculous issue that has been raised. That Obama has had to deal with this for so long and hear the arguments of those who seems have lost any issue of substance drives me nuts. Actually it makes me angry.

I am now angry enough that I am to the point that I want vote for him because how stupid this issue is. I know voting for anyone out of reactions is not the best process but enough is enough.

Politics - enough already.

Junk Mail

I get junk mail, often as many as 40 junk mails per day. Some of them are incredibly disgusting just from the little that unavoidable turns up on my screen. I don't open them, I delete them as soon I can, but they just keep coming. I get offer for computer programs, weight loss products and who know what else. Oh yeah we have filters and spam blockers and we have virus controls and who knows what. But junk mail is tenacious and creative. We speak to our IT guy and he assures us that we have everything we need and more so. But they just keep coming.

I wonder if we do the same thing at church only without the innate creativity? Here is a question - how many times a day or week does your congregation need to hear from you? Once a day? Three times per week? There are days, and I am mildly embarrassed to admit this, but we send out as many as 7 - 10 emails a day! Not to specific individuals, but general emails, not just about announcements but prayer requests or special notifications or suddenly this message has to get out or that message has to get out. Pretty soon it becomes evident that we just send junk. Maybe a good rule of thumb is to send no more that two per day. Just two, one for information and one for any prayer concerns that come in. One in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Communication takes planning and forethought. It ought to be creative and engaging. Simple, clear and memorable. It also ought to be current. How far in advance do you give information on an event? If you send something out weekly then probably no more thant 4 weeks ahead - my opinion. too far out and they forget it or ignore it. It just becomes a part of the noise.

Communicating is taking an increasing amount of our attention these days. So I am curious about what you do in terms keeping your church abreast of information, especially emails. How many is too many and often often do you crosss the line?

Less Is More

This morning in my office I am listening to podcast of an interview with Seth Godin. Or more accurately I am trying to listen to this interview. There is nothing wrong the connection, but there is a problem with the content. I have been listening for over 10 minutes and I have yet hear anything from Seth Godin. I have heard a lot of stuff from guys who are having great time bantering among themselves. They are sooo into their conversation. They enjoy each other and they are cool.

But I don't care. I didn't download this podcast to listen to their banter, this wasn't what was advertised. I came to hear Seth Godin. Not only is this added stuff distracting but it is annoying as well. It is annoying because I don't know these guys nor do I have any idea of what they are stalking about - nor do I care. This is just noise I have deal with until I can hear what I came for.

How often do we do this in the church? How often do we load up too much stuff into events or communications to those we are trying to reach? People come for one thing and suddenly they get a load of what they didn't come for. They come for a children's program and we load up on announcements and information they did not come for nor, do they want. They come for a seminar but have to listen to presentation on all the other programs of the church. Less is more. If I get what I have come for and it is delivered well, I will come back and then I will want to know more and I will look for it. But I have wade through stuff I am not interested in, I won't come back. I have endure banter that is in essence meaningless, I won't be back.

Less is more.

A Voice I So Respect

William Willimon serves as the Bishop of the Northern Alabama conference of the UMC. Prior to this position he was the Dean of the Chapel of Duke University. he has a pssion for Christ and for the church.

Here is a taste of his wisdom: Here we are, deep in Lent, Christian season of penitence and introspection, season of admission of sin and confession of our finitude. We are in a mess. We are not gods unto ourselves. We are sinners. Who but the poor old church will - in this upbeat, feel-good, progressive society - tell such truth about us?

He now blogs, has a for a while, but if you haven't read him I encourage you to do so. You can find at http://willimon.blogspot.com/.

Obama's Pastor

Right now there is a political storm over the relationship and influence that Jeremiah Wright has over a young named Obama. For decades Jeremiah Wright has been the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He has been the pastor of Barak Obama for years. He is a fiery pastor with a galvanizing manner of speaking. He has been critical of the policies and behaviors of our country ands its leadership. He has controversial opinions.

So what. No seriously so what. Jeremiah Wright is not running for President. He is not running for anything. He is not even the pastor of the church any longer. Obama has distanced himself from the comments that the media has latched on to. But that is another amazing thing. They weren't even his comments, they were Wright's. Obama has never said anything remotely related to what his pastor said.

I have been a pastor for almost 30 years and I will tell you that few people if any have agreed with me on everything or can remember what I think about most things. If one of the members of my church ran for office, would my sermons, my writings become an issue? Oh please let that never happen. That Obama has had to deal with this is ridiculous. I am not supporting him or not supporting him. That is not the issue. This should have never become an issue. It also demonstrates one of the fatal flaws of our current system, our immaturity. We have news organizations and talk radio that have too much time fill and not enough genuine content, so we go from information to opinion and fluff. Non-issues become center stage. We lap this stuff and come back for seconds.

Hey, Obama has a pastor. He actually goes to church. I have no idea if McCain has a pastor but if he does apparently he hasn't said anything incendiary enough to warrant attention. I don't remember if Hillary has a pastor, but he must be fairly boring as well. Huckabee was a pastor, no one seems to pay attention him or what he says now that he is out of the race. So why are we focused on the words of a retired pastor who said these things years ago before Obama even declared himself a candidate for President.

It is time we grew up and turn off the TV and radio. I am a registered Republican and mostly conservative. But this drives me crazy. Enough already.

It's Only March!!!

We have three primary candidates right now. One is African American, one is woman, and one is in his seventies. All three have some unique issues and perspectives they bring to the table. All also have one thing in common, there are people who are ardently against all of them. Obama has the detractors of his inexperience. Hillary is seen as divisive, McCain isn't conservative enough. The other thing they all have in common is that they more than enough money to keep their faces in front of for another six months.

The election is...God be merciful...235 days from today. For the next 235 days...the number is hard to choke down...we are going to hear about every flaw and crack these people have. Eventually it will be whittled down to two primary candidates. But then you will find out why they aren't worthy to serve. Oh everyone promises to run a positive campaign but apparently we don't like them because it is the negative ads that work. We listen to them and they keep cranking them out.

Can we do this differently? Can't we make them write a term paper on "Why I Ought to Be President"? make it 30 pages and they have to tell us what they are going to do about the economy or immigration or the war or how to fix our infrastructures. Or maybe a power point presentation,that worked pretty well for Al Gore. or a diorama like you had to make in the 3rd grade. It's 3 am in the morning, enough already, leave us alone for a while. Or maybe make the people in Michigan and Florida e-mail their votes in since they didn't get to play in the primary season, they had detention for some reason. They didn't stay in line or something.

I am all for democracy, it just seems too Junior High the way we are going about it now. In my neck of the woods there was special election for a house seat and the campaign was miserable, negative and sad. The democrat won, but he has run again in the fall and the Republican loser gets another shot at it then. Wonderful. There ought to be an adult mature method of selecting our leaders. Any ideas? Maybe we have what we deserve and earned. I hope not. I hope it can get better.

Call that one a win!

Last night we hosted Andrew Marin in a seminar on to build bridges with Gay and Lesbian community. We had close to, if not over 100 people here to listen to his message of extending the grace and love of Jesus to these who have been shunned by the Christian community. It lasted over 2 hours and we had a wide variety of people from multiple churches. Andrew also met briefly with our Senior High youth group and answered their questions. The unanimous response was positive and that we needed to hear more and do this again.

The other response I heard repeatedly was kudos to me for being "brave". Brave, what brave? What is so brave about being faithful to the gospel? We were not asked to cut out verses in the Bible nor were we asked to change our interpretation of Scripture. We were challenged to be gracious and loving, to share the love ourselves have received. Why is being nice being brave? What does it say about us that extending God compassion to the Gay and Lesbian community is act of bravery? Why isn't that something that is a base line expectation? Well enough of that rant.

Over all Andrew was very good and gave insights on how to connect with Gays and Lesbians and deflect their anxieties. He has a compelling story and extensive experience. Our intern Dawn Bodi did an excellent job of coordinating the event and executing the evening. My hats off to her.

We hope to do other seminars that impact our community, but right now, I am enjoying remembering this one as great win!

One Small Step

Tonight we host an event on how we can show the love of God to the Gay and Lesbian community. We are not altering our view on homosexuality but we are altering how we interact with them. This event was born out of a class we had on this book, "unChristian" by David Kinneman. 91% of those outside of church said that their perecption of those who follow Jesus are ardently antihomosexual. And our objections are played out with little of love that we claim to show. Often we are mean to the point of being cruel.

The presenter this evening is a young man by the name of Andrew Marin and he is coming this evening to show us a different path, which I believe has caused not a little concern among some of our congregation. But that is all right. It is going to be somewhat uncomfortable, fine. It is also the right thing to do. I pray and know that tonight Jesus will be in this place. I will let you know how this went.

Maybe, just Maybe

This past week Seth Godin penned these words:
There's a myth that all you need to do is outline your vision and prove it's right—then, quite suddenly, people will line up and support you.
In fact, the opposite is true. Remarkable visions and genuine insight are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your efforts are met with even more resistance. Products, services, career paths... whatever it is, the forces for mediocrity will align to stop you, forgiving no errors and never backing down until it's over.
If it were any other way, it would be easy. And if it were any other way, everyone would do it and your work would ultimately be devalued. The yin and yang are clear: without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, it's unlikely it would be worth the journey. Persist.

Maybe, just maybe we see this too often in the church. We are told cast the vision, keep the vision in front of the people. Life up the vision because vision leaks. But it is the endless resistance of mediocrity, the tireless forces that seem to rise up against every good idea that we need to be aware of. The forces are easy to see, offer a new idea and see how quickly it will be before someone tells you why it will not work or that they have tried this before so don't even give it a shot.

So maybe, just maybe persistence is the spiritual value we need to the most right now. It is not for a lack of ideas. Even if you do not have any of your own there are more than enough floating around to meet the need. It is a lack of persistence. Rabbi Friedman one said the forces of resistance will always out live the forces of progress because progress is not so singularly focused. Resistance has one goal and one only, to stop you. Progress has a multitude of goals and is not as emotionally charged.

Persistence is easy to write and hard to live out. Which is fine but it requires encouragement and a conviction that we doing the right thing. And that is hard to generate alone. Those who persist need champions to come along side periodically and spur them onward. This weekend if you see someone persisting encourage them, recognize that fact, and shield them for a moment against those who knowingly or unknowingly want to drag us back to mediocrity.

Am I Emergent?

I read blogs. I like reading blogs. I read them every day. Lately a significant portion of what I read centers around the emergent church, movement ... thing. I have read a fair share of books concerning the emerging church. I have drunk from the well of McLaren and enjoyed it. I have dabbled in McKnight and have emerged refreshed. I have heard Tony Jones speak, seen Dan Kimball, and try not miss Andrew Jones, I have done the tour. But the question remains - am I emergent or emerging or however you says it?

I don't know. I feel like I am probably a little old for it. I am crusing through 52 heading towards 53. I dress like I am 52. Oxford button down shirts - blu, khakis and boat shoes - no socks. I have no facial hair. I don't like lap tops and still use a PC. I would rather listen to ESPN rather than David Crowder. I don't own a iPod - they look like they break too easily.

But there is something about this whole emergent faith that draws me. From what I have seen and read these young people love Jesus passionately - recklessly, they are theologically grounded and astute. They also want to give feet to their faith. They want to make an impact in the lives of others in their neighborhoods and beyond. They are as concerned about Darfur as they are about the local food bank. They want to be authentic in their faith, admit they have flaws and hold back the judgments. It is not about the show, it is about their heart and how they can touch another life for Jesus. It is not about the size of the church as it is about how large is our faith. This is a faith that challenges the overwhelming issues of our day regardless of political affiliation. Economics, ecology, race and sexual orientation issues are all on the table and not everyone agrees as to the solutions but they stand together and support one another. For them it is all about living out the Kingdom of God.

Okay, so I am little too linear. So I vote more Republican than Democrat. Yeah, I don't drink beer or wine, would take a diet Coke though. There is not a hope in hannah that I am getting anything pierced or tattooed. But I pray I have their passion and courage to follow Jesus wherever and whenever. I want their creativity to see the enormous nature of the gospel of Jesus. I crave their devotion to those who are the littlest, least, last and lost. I pray for them, for us. I encourage them to press on for the Lord they love. They are not a threat, they are brothers and sisters in the faith.

So how emergent am I? I still don't know, but I don't think it matters. One step at time, one foot in front of another I will follow Jesus, and we will walk together.

No ordinary people

There is a quote from C.S. Lewis that concludes a book we are studying at church - There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. It stopped me in my tracks. I am sure I have read it before. But it has a power at this moment for me - in me.

What if this was my governing attitude for my life. That every person I encounter is extraordinary, that they are all immortals. That they are all of infinite worth.

What if my attitude matched reality? There are no ordinary people.