I'm currently at some InterVarsity staff meetings, and one of the hallmarks of InterVarsity's ministry is an emphasis on manuscript Bible study. During one of our sessions here, IVCF president Alec Hill gave an exposition of Acts 20:16-21:1 and invited us to examine the text with him. This is the passage where the apostle Paul is bidding farewell to the Ephesian elders, and it's significant because it's the only spoken discourse in Acts that is addressed to Christians, since all the rest are in contexts of evangelistic proclamation. It's also instructive because it is a Christian leader giving guidance to other Christian leaders, giving us rare insight into the dynamics of Christian leadership.
One piece of this text that jumped out at me is verse 22: "And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there." Paul did not know what was in store for him. Uncertainty is always going to be a facet of Christian life and ministry. Despite all our plans and preparation, there is always going to be a degree to which we simply do not and cannot know what will happen to us in the future. This "not knowing" is both scary and comforting - I might have no idea what is going to happen to me in the next year or five years or whatever, but that's okay. I'm not alone. Paul didn't know either.
This uncertainty is complicated by what Paul does know for certain. Verse 23: "I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me." The only certainty he has is suffering and hardship. That's just reality. Christian life, ministry and leadership are bound up with difficulty.
Given this uncertainty of the future and certainty of hardship, how in the world does Paul continue on? What empowers him to persevere? Clarity of vision. Verse 24: "However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me--the task of testifying to the good news of God's grace."
So knowing what God has called us to do helps us persevere through the uncertainty and the suffering, whether it's church work or parachurch work or ministry in local suburban neighborhoods or in overseas global contexts. (And as a side note, I think it's significant that this missional perspective is thoroughly trinitarian - God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are all present in these few verses, calling, sending and sustaining us in our work.) Whatever task God is calling you to, may you persevere through the uncertainty and the inevitable challenges and find missional clarity of vision.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
The gospel of shalom for both haves and have-nots
Most people only know of Jeremiah 29 as the source of that nice inspirational quote where God says, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Yes, that’s true, but consider the context. God is speaking to Israelite exiles in Babylon, who are captives in enemy territory. They did not want to be there; they wanted to go home to Israel. And what is God’s call to them? Jeremiah 29:5 and following: Build houses. Settle down. Plant gardens. Have kids. Invest in this local community. Call it home, even if you don’t want to be here. Make it your own. And then verse 7 – Seek the welfare of the city, because in its welfare you will find your welfare. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city. If it prospers, you too will prosper. Seek the shalom of the city. In its shalom, you will find your shalom.
This is God’s call to suburban Christians and churches – seek the welfare of the city, both your individual local suburb as well as your larger metropolitan area. Whether you think suburbia is paradise or exile, if you’re in the suburbs, call it your home, commit yourself to it, invest in it. Seek the welfare of the suburbs. Minister to the suburbs as well as from them to the world around it.
A key word for me in all this is “shalom” – peace, wholeness, well-being, not just the absence of conflict but a portrait of how God intended life to be. Right relationships between us and God, us and other people, our communities, our environment. I’ve appreciated Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann on this. Usually when we think of the gospel, we think in terms of deliverance, rescue, salvation from peril. And Brueggemann would say yes, that’s part of it. But that’s not all of it. Bruggemann says that there are actually two sides of the gospel of shalom, especially in the Old Testament. He talks about two different kinds of shalom – shalom for the haves, and shalom for the have-nots.
We’re more familiar with shalom for the have-nots, for the poor, the oppressed, the slaves in need of God’s deliverance. This is the exodus tradition and the prophetic tradition. These parts of the Old Testament narrative were about and addressed to people in peril – slaves in Egypt, those under attack from hostile foreigners, the poor, the desperate. For these, the have-nots, God has a gospel of salvation and deliverance. He is the God who rescues us from peril. When God saves us from slavery, sin and death, that’s salvation. That’s shalom.
But that’s not all. The other tradition, Brueggemann says, is the stewardship tradition. This is the gospel for the haves, the affluent, the wealthy. It is the parts of the Hebrew narrative when people were not at war, when they were not in immediate peril or dire straits. We see this during the united monarchy period, and it’s also a major theme of the wisdom literature, especially the book of Proverbs. And most significantly, it's in the Genesis creation mandate, before the fall. It is creational. After the fall, we needed deliverance and rescue. But before the fall, when things were as God intended them to be in his original shalom, God called us to this stewardship tradition. It’s the tradition that focuses not on the need for a deliverer, but the need for a wise manager, the good steward, the just king who will manage the kingdom’s resources wisely so that all in the kingdom may flourish. This is the gospel of stewardship and management – God calls the haves to steward their wealth so that the have-nots may experience this flourishing, this wholeness, this celebration, this shalom.
They’re two sides of the same coin. The gospel for both the poor and the rich. The poor and oppressed need to hear God’s word of salvation and rescue. The rich and well-off need to hear God’s word of stewardship and disposal of resources. (And of course it is also true that the materially poor may be spiritually rich, and the materially rich are often spiritually poor, so deliverance and stewardship run both ways.) We’ve all heard the saying about God comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Brueggemann would say that a biblical theology of shalom is a gospel of deliverance for the oppressed and stewardship for the blessed.
Here’s an example of these two sides of the coin. Think about police officers, law enforcement and firefighters. Sometimes they do the work of deliverance, rescuing people from immediate peril. But most of the time they are doing the work of crime prevention and fire prevention. That’s the work of wise management and promoting community shalom. Suburban churches can do the same thing. Sometimes we do ministries of deliverance – rescuing people from sin, addiction, self-destructive habits and so on. Other times we invite people into the work of stewardship and blessing others. Suburban people can participate in the kingdom either way.
This is God’s call to suburban Christians and churches – seek the welfare of the city, both your individual local suburb as well as your larger metropolitan area. Whether you think suburbia is paradise or exile, if you’re in the suburbs, call it your home, commit yourself to it, invest in it. Seek the welfare of the suburbs. Minister to the suburbs as well as from them to the world around it.
A key word for me in all this is “shalom” – peace, wholeness, well-being, not just the absence of conflict but a portrait of how God intended life to be. Right relationships between us and God, us and other people, our communities, our environment. I’ve appreciated Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann on this. Usually when we think of the gospel, we think in terms of deliverance, rescue, salvation from peril. And Brueggemann would say yes, that’s part of it. But that’s not all of it. Bruggemann says that there are actually two sides of the gospel of shalom, especially in the Old Testament. He talks about two different kinds of shalom – shalom for the haves, and shalom for the have-nots.
We’re more familiar with shalom for the have-nots, for the poor, the oppressed, the slaves in need of God’s deliverance. This is the exodus tradition and the prophetic tradition. These parts of the Old Testament narrative were about and addressed to people in peril – slaves in Egypt, those under attack from hostile foreigners, the poor, the desperate. For these, the have-nots, God has a gospel of salvation and deliverance. He is the God who rescues us from peril. When God saves us from slavery, sin and death, that’s salvation. That’s shalom.
But that’s not all. The other tradition, Brueggemann says, is the stewardship tradition. This is the gospel for the haves, the affluent, the wealthy. It is the parts of the Hebrew narrative when people were not at war, when they were not in immediate peril or dire straits. We see this during the united monarchy period, and it’s also a major theme of the wisdom literature, especially the book of Proverbs. And most significantly, it's in the Genesis creation mandate, before the fall. It is creational. After the fall, we needed deliverance and rescue. But before the fall, when things were as God intended them to be in his original shalom, God called us to this stewardship tradition. It’s the tradition that focuses not on the need for a deliverer, but the need for a wise manager, the good steward, the just king who will manage the kingdom’s resources wisely so that all in the kingdom may flourish. This is the gospel of stewardship and management – God calls the haves to steward their wealth so that the have-nots may experience this flourishing, this wholeness, this celebration, this shalom.
They’re two sides of the same coin. The gospel for both the poor and the rich. The poor and oppressed need to hear God’s word of salvation and rescue. The rich and well-off need to hear God’s word of stewardship and disposal of resources. (And of course it is also true that the materially poor may be spiritually rich, and the materially rich are often spiritually poor, so deliverance and stewardship run both ways.) We’ve all heard the saying about God comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Brueggemann would say that a biblical theology of shalom is a gospel of deliverance for the oppressed and stewardship for the blessed.
Here’s an example of these two sides of the coin. Think about police officers, law enforcement and firefighters. Sometimes they do the work of deliverance, rescuing people from immediate peril. But most of the time they are doing the work of crime prevention and fire prevention. That’s the work of wise management and promoting community shalom. Suburban churches can do the same thing. Sometimes we do ministries of deliverance – rescuing people from sin, addiction, self-destructive habits and so on. Other times we invite people into the work of stewardship and blessing others. Suburban people can participate in the kingdom either way.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Lenten reflections on pain and transformation
A few random thoughts during this Lenten journey. A few weeks ago our church had a men's breakfast, and our topic was how pain shapes us in our spirituality. One comment made by our group facilitator, Doug Stewart (who has a chapter in this book), was that generally speaking, if we are not transformed by our pain, we will transmit our pain to others. I thought that was pretty profound.
So we talked about how we tend to avoid our pain or distract ourselves from it. Or we work to overcome or fix our pain. I commented that after losing my father to suicide, one thing that was helpful to me was rediscovering and practicing the spiritual discipline of lament. Walter Brueggemann says that the Hebrew psalms of lament were a way of ordering their grief and verbalizing their sense of loss and protest with how the world is and bringing these emotions before God. This certainly connects with Jesus' beatitude that blessed are those who mourn, who get outside what's going on inside, for the simple practical reason that unless we externalize our interior pain, we are not in a position or posture to receive comfort, whether from God or anyone else.
And something else that I observed was that when I was researching my grieving book, what came up over and over was that Western Christians tend to have a poorly developed theology of suffering. We see suffering as abnormal, something to be fixed or therapeutically overcome. In contrast, for the vast majority of Christians throughout history and around the world, suffering is simply a fact of life. And I think it was Henri Nouwen that said that our experience of suffering, pain and loss should help us have greater solidarity with the suffering of the global church, as well as Christ himself. That we should not see loss or suffering as unusual, but normative.
Anyway, I've been musing on this a bit this Lent. I was just at a conference where I saw a friend whose ten-month-old son also has Down syndrome; he was born last year right around our son Elijah's first birthday. My friend mentioned that our family blog, especially a first-birthday post by my wife, had been very helpful to her, that it gave her hope that things would be okay even if they weren't what she had anticipated for her son. So I was glad to hear that our experience had been an unexpected encouragement to her.
I'm curious - what do you do to prevent transmitting your pain to others? How have you been transformed by your pain, your loss, your disappointments?
So we talked about how we tend to avoid our pain or distract ourselves from it. Or we work to overcome or fix our pain. I commented that after losing my father to suicide, one thing that was helpful to me was rediscovering and practicing the spiritual discipline of lament. Walter Brueggemann says that the Hebrew psalms of lament were a way of ordering their grief and verbalizing their sense of loss and protest with how the world is and bringing these emotions before God. This certainly connects with Jesus' beatitude that blessed are those who mourn, who get outside what's going on inside, for the simple practical reason that unless we externalize our interior pain, we are not in a position or posture to receive comfort, whether from God or anyone else.
And something else that I observed was that when I was researching my grieving book, what came up over and over was that Western Christians tend to have a poorly developed theology of suffering. We see suffering as abnormal, something to be fixed or therapeutically overcome. In contrast, for the vast majority of Christians throughout history and around the world, suffering is simply a fact of life. And I think it was Henri Nouwen that said that our experience of suffering, pain and loss should help us have greater solidarity with the suffering of the global church, as well as Christ himself. That we should not see loss or suffering as unusual, but normative.
Anyway, I've been musing on this a bit this Lent. I was just at a conference where I saw a friend whose ten-month-old son also has Down syndrome; he was born last year right around our son Elijah's first birthday. My friend mentioned that our family blog, especially a first-birthday post by my wife, had been very helpful to her, that it gave her hope that things would be okay even if they weren't what she had anticipated for her son. So I was glad to hear that our experience had been an unexpected encouragement to her.
I'm curious - what do you do to prevent transmitting your pain to others? How have you been transformed by your pain, your loss, your disappointments?
Friday, March 16, 2007
Happy blogiversary to me
Today is St. Urho's Day, an invented holiday created by a Minnesotan in honor of a fictional saint who drove all the grasshoppers out of Finland. A teacher at my hometown high school celebrated it every year to honor his Finnish heritage. You can even send St. Urho's Day e-cards. My wife's family background is partially Irish, so we're naturally more into St. Patrick's Day (and always get shamrock shakes every year), but kudos to St. Urho and his fans. I just think it's kind of wild that someone can create an entire holiday. (Likewise, Sweetest Day in October was originated by a candy company that wanted to create an excuse to get people to buy more candy.)
Today also happens to be the one-year blogiversary of this blog. (There is dispute in the blogosphere over whether it should be spelled "blogoversary" or even "bloggoversary," but "blogiversary" seems to have the highest usage.) At first I wasn't sure I would have enough ideas to be blogging regularly, but I was surprised how often a bloggable thought comes across. Plenty of material for two or three posts a week, though lots of things have disappeared into the ether because I didn't post on it in timely enough a fashion. Blogging has eaten up a lot more time than I ever anticipated (more in reading other people's blogs than posting on my own). I'm trying to be more disciplined these days. But I like it. It's fun and generally more valuable than not. And I've recently drawn my wife into blogging - she has started posting more regularly on our family blog.
At any rate, I'm celebrating my blogiversary with a new template, just to freshen up the look a bit. Also, in many cultures, if it's your birthday you don't receive gifts from others but instead are the gift-giver. So in honor of the blogiversary of The Suburban Christian blog, I'd like to give out a few copies of my book The Suburban Christian. I have five copies sitting here that I'll send out for free to the first five people that contact me, whether by blog comment or e-mail or whatever. No obligation - my only request is that you really read it (rather than resell it on Amazon or eBay) and, if you're so inspired and inclined, to blog about it on your own blog, or whatever other medium might be appropriate to you. Hope you find it helpful!
So thanks again to everyone who reads or visits this blog. It's been fun to have the interaction and virtual community in this small corner of the blogosphere.
Today also happens to be the one-year blogiversary of this blog. (There is dispute in the blogosphere over whether it should be spelled "blogoversary" or even "bloggoversary," but "blogiversary" seems to have the highest usage.) At first I wasn't sure I would have enough ideas to be blogging regularly, but I was surprised how often a bloggable thought comes across. Plenty of material for two or three posts a week, though lots of things have disappeared into the ether because I didn't post on it in timely enough a fashion. Blogging has eaten up a lot more time than I ever anticipated (more in reading other people's blogs than posting on my own). I'm trying to be more disciplined these days. But I like it. It's fun and generally more valuable than not. And I've recently drawn my wife into blogging - she has started posting more regularly on our family blog.
At any rate, I'm celebrating my blogiversary with a new template, just to freshen up the look a bit. Also, in many cultures, if it's your birthday you don't receive gifts from others but instead are the gift-giver. So in honor of the blogiversary of The Suburban Christian blog, I'd like to give out a few copies of my book The Suburban Christian. I have five copies sitting here that I'll send out for free to the first five people that contact me, whether by blog comment or e-mail or whatever. No obligation - my only request is that you really read it (rather than resell it on Amazon or eBay) and, if you're so inspired and inclined, to blog about it on your own blog, or whatever other medium might be appropriate to you. Hope you find it helpful!
So thanks again to everyone who reads or visits this blog. It's been fun to have the interaction and virtual community in this small corner of the blogosphere.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Body image and artificial beauty
In the book Wanting to Be Her, Michelle Graham talks about an actress who didn't recognize herself in a magazine because of how different she had been made up. Well, More Than Serving Tea coeditor Nikki Toyama recently blogged about this link:
http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.ca/flat2.asp?id=7134
It has an amazing one-minute video of how women are made up and photoshopped to look entirely different from how they normally appear in real life. Even supermodels don't look like supermodels. Check it out.
http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.ca/flat2.asp?id=7134
It has an amazing one-minute video of how women are made up and photoshopped to look entirely different from how they normally appear in real life. Even supermodels don't look like supermodels. Check it out.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Suburbia's origin story
[This is an excerpt from a seminar I did at the National Pastors Convention.]
If you’re a comic book fanboy, you know the importance of the origin story. The infant Kal-El was the sole survivor of the planet Krypton, rocketed to Earth as a baby, raised by his adoptive parents to stand for truth, justice and the American way, using his superhuman powers to defend his adopted world from all threats. That’s Superman’s origin story. Or Bruce Wayne, a young boy who watched as his parents were gunned down in an act of random violence, grows up to become a caped crusader, a relentless creature of the night, protecting the innocent, striking fear into the hearts of criminals as . . . the Batman. That’s his origin story. The origin story sets the tone for the character. It establishes their aspirations, motivation, rationale and destiny.
So what’s suburbia’s origin story? I find it instructive to go back in history and to see suburbia’s original goodness. Suburbia, originally, was about providing affordable housing in healthy living environments. Go back to the late 1800s, the industrial revolution. The culture had shifted from rural to urban. It was an urban jungle, people lived in overcrowded urban slums in the shadow of factory smokestacks, and it was toxic and dangerous. Bad sanitation, bad infrastructure, noisy. It was a public health hazard. People were at risk at home and at work.
Suburbs were developed so people could live away from industrial areas and have better living conditions, with green space and open land and better health. That was a good thing. Suburbia provided affordable housing for millions of families after WWII. All the soldiers and sailors came back from the war and there wasn’t room in the urban centers, which had decayed during the Depression and the war effort. Suburban housing was affordable and peaceful. It was considered the happy medium between city and country, away from an overindustrialized, mechanized culture, closer to parks and grass and woods, while still having convenience and access to the benefits of civilization. That’s the origin story, suburbia’s creational good. It points back to one of the most basic human needs – shelter. If the Bible starts in the garden of Eden and ends in the city of the New Jerusalem, suburbia was a way of bringing garden and city together.
The problem, of course, is that modern suburbia has departed from its original noble ideals, especially in terms of the vision of affordable housing for all. We all know that suburbia can be an extremely expensive place to live, that housing values have far outpaced income, making living in suburbia difficult for the lower and middle class.– the cost of living in suburbia now, for many, runs counter to the original dream. Instead of a place of peace and rest, a suburban home and lifestyle often generates financial anxiety and worry. It’s no surprise that debt counseling and financial management are now strategic ministries for many suburban churches.
If you’re a comic book fanboy, you know the importance of the origin story. The infant Kal-El was the sole survivor of the planet Krypton, rocketed to Earth as a baby, raised by his adoptive parents to stand for truth, justice and the American way, using his superhuman powers to defend his adopted world from all threats. That’s Superman’s origin story. Or Bruce Wayne, a young boy who watched as his parents were gunned down in an act of random violence, grows up to become a caped crusader, a relentless creature of the night, protecting the innocent, striking fear into the hearts of criminals as . . . the Batman. That’s his origin story. The origin story sets the tone for the character. It establishes their aspirations, motivation, rationale and destiny.
So what’s suburbia’s origin story? I find it instructive to go back in history and to see suburbia’s original goodness. Suburbia, originally, was about providing affordable housing in healthy living environments. Go back to the late 1800s, the industrial revolution. The culture had shifted from rural to urban. It was an urban jungle, people lived in overcrowded urban slums in the shadow of factory smokestacks, and it was toxic and dangerous. Bad sanitation, bad infrastructure, noisy. It was a public health hazard. People were at risk at home and at work.
Suburbs were developed so people could live away from industrial areas and have better living conditions, with green space and open land and better health. That was a good thing. Suburbia provided affordable housing for millions of families after WWII. All the soldiers and sailors came back from the war and there wasn’t room in the urban centers, which had decayed during the Depression and the war effort. Suburban housing was affordable and peaceful. It was considered the happy medium between city and country, away from an overindustrialized, mechanized culture, closer to parks and grass and woods, while still having convenience and access to the benefits of civilization. That’s the origin story, suburbia’s creational good. It points back to one of the most basic human needs – shelter. If the Bible starts in the garden of Eden and ends in the city of the New Jerusalem, suburbia was a way of bringing garden and city together.
The problem, of course, is that modern suburbia has departed from its original noble ideals, especially in terms of the vision of affordable housing for all. We all know that suburbia can be an extremely expensive place to live, that housing values have far outpaced income, making living in suburbia difficult for the lower and middle class.– the cost of living in suburbia now, for many, runs counter to the original dream. Instead of a place of peace and rest, a suburban home and lifestyle often generates financial anxiety and worry. It’s no surprise that debt counseling and financial management are now strategic ministries for many suburban churches.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Corporate language in worship
While I was at the National Pastors Convention, I had lunch with Mark Labberton, author of the new book The Dangerous Act of Worship. He mentioned that his church (First Presbyterian of Berkeley) had pretty much stopped using individualistic "I," "me" and "my" language in their corporate worship, replacing them with "we," "us" and "our" vocabulary in songs and liturgy. They haven't made a big deal about it; they've just done it. And Labberton said that it has really shaped the character of their congregation, that folks recognize that church is about their corporate identity as the body of Christ, not just the individualistic "Jesus and me" approach so common to American evangelicalism.
We're starting to do this in our own church. Last month for our annual meeting, we sang "Be Thou Our Vision" instead of "Be Thou My Vision." This past week Ellen and I planned and led worship, and while looking at our list of songs, we noticed that many of them were "I" and "my" type songs. This especially jumped out in the song "Lord, Have Mercy," which says "Lord, have mercy on me," which contrasts with the "Lord, have mercy on us" in the liturgy earlier in the service. We opted to keep it but changed it to "us" the last time through the chorus. Likewise, our recessional song was "May the Mind of Christ My Savior," and one of the verses of the original version reads "Looking only unto Jesus as I onward go." This seemed too individualistic an application for a corporate recessional song, so we changed it to "as we onward go," as well as all the other singular references in the song.
Now, I should clarify that we didn't change all individualist language in all of the songs throughout the service - several eucharistic songs were still "I" and "my." There's certainly a place for both, since worship is simultaneously personal and corporate. But if the bias of the evangelical church tends toward to be the individual, then we need to be more intentional about recovering corporate language. After all, we pray, "Our father in heaven," not "My father." And the great creeds of the church say, "We believe," not "I believe." So as we believe and pray, so too can we sing acknowledging our corporate identity as the body of Christ.
We're starting to do this in our own church. Last month for our annual meeting, we sang "Be Thou Our Vision" instead of "Be Thou My Vision." This past week Ellen and I planned and led worship, and while looking at our list of songs, we noticed that many of them were "I" and "my" type songs. This especially jumped out in the song "Lord, Have Mercy," which says "Lord, have mercy on me," which contrasts with the "Lord, have mercy on us" in the liturgy earlier in the service. We opted to keep it but changed it to "us" the last time through the chorus. Likewise, our recessional song was "May the Mind of Christ My Savior," and one of the verses of the original version reads "Looking only unto Jesus as I onward go." This seemed too individualistic an application for a corporate recessional song, so we changed it to "as we onward go," as well as all the other singular references in the song.
Now, I should clarify that we didn't change all individualist language in all of the songs throughout the service - several eucharistic songs were still "I" and "my." There's certainly a place for both, since worship is simultaneously personal and corporate. But if the bias of the evangelical church tends toward to be the individual, then we need to be more intentional about recovering corporate language. After all, we pray, "Our father in heaven," not "My father." And the great creeds of the church say, "We believe," not "I believe." So as we believe and pray, so too can we sing acknowledging our corporate identity as the body of Christ.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Youth Specialties makes public apology for racist content
Over the last week I've been following various Asian American blogs regarding a recently published Zondervan/Youth Specialties skit book. The book included a skit that perpetuated some horribly racist stereotypes of Asian Americans. Soong-Chan Rah (professor at North Park and one of my authors) brought the issue to light and has been working with Youth Specialties and Zondervan to resolve the issue.
To the amazement of many, Zondervan and Youth Specialties have acted quickly and justly. They have frozen all copies of the book and intend to destroy all existing inventory. They are publishing a new edition replacing the offensive sketch and are offering to replace copies for anybody who has the original.
Most significantly, this weekend Mark Oestreicher (president of YS) posted a public apology on his blog, and the Skit Guys have also apologized. In cases like this of public sin and offense, apology and taking responsibility must be equally public. So I am very impressed with how fully they have responded and owned up to this whole situation. I sent Marko an e-mail earlier in the week, and I just got a personal response interacting with my message. He said that he's been grieving over the fact that Asian American kids may be present in youth groups where the skit is performed, and he is appealing to youth pastors out there who have the book to please, please not use the skit.
To me, this is a huge, significant contrast with the Rickshaw Rally VBS curriculum fiasco a few years ago, where the offending publisher basically stonewalled, dismissed and ignored the outcry from the Asian American church community. (See Soong-Chan's chapter in Growing Healthy Asian American Churches or Ed Gilbreath's Reconciliation Blues for more on the story.) Kudos to YS and Zondervan for a much more constructive approach for racial justice and healing. They have provided the church with a positive model of how to move forward.
To the amazement of many, Zondervan and Youth Specialties have acted quickly and justly. They have frozen all copies of the book and intend to destroy all existing inventory. They are publishing a new edition replacing the offensive sketch and are offering to replace copies for anybody who has the original.
Most significantly, this weekend Mark Oestreicher (president of YS) posted a public apology on his blog, and the Skit Guys have also apologized. In cases like this of public sin and offense, apology and taking responsibility must be equally public. So I am very impressed with how fully they have responded and owned up to this whole situation. I sent Marko an e-mail earlier in the week, and I just got a personal response interacting with my message. He said that he's been grieving over the fact that Asian American kids may be present in youth groups where the skit is performed, and he is appealing to youth pastors out there who have the book to please, please not use the skit.
To me, this is a huge, significant contrast with the Rickshaw Rally VBS curriculum fiasco a few years ago, where the offending publisher basically stonewalled, dismissed and ignored the outcry from the Asian American church community. (See Soong-Chan's chapter in Growing Healthy Asian American Churches or Ed Gilbreath's Reconciliation Blues for more on the story.) Kudos to YS and Zondervan for a much more constructive approach for racial justice and healing. They have provided the church with a positive model of how to move forward.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Being missional, being glocal
I just read through the winter 2007 issue of Leadership Journal, which is on the theme "Going Missional." Some random but related ideas and thoughts from it:
Oak Brook Community Church, a suburban church not far from my work, flies a different national flag every Sunday, and the congregation prays for that country that day. The mission task force gathers, prays for peace and runs the flag up the pole. "We want to demonstrate that God loves the whole world and that everyone is welcome here," says pastor Richard Glyman. The church started doing this five years ago, after 9/11, and has flown over 300 different flags so far.
Bob Roberts, pastor of NorthWood Church in Keller, Texas, and author of the books Transformation and Glocalization, asked his congregation to invert the shirt collar of the person in front of them, find the label and call out the name of the nation where the shirt was made. China, India, Vietnam, Mexico, Chile, Kenya, Dominican Republic and Spain were all mentioned before anyone said "USA."
I just checked the tags of my sons' shirts, and they're from Guatemala, Mexico, Dominican Republic and Indonesia. The InterVarsity shirt I'm wearing right now is from Bangladesh, and my T-shirt, which is from a mission trip to the Dominican Republic, was made in Honduras. So I just brought out our globe and showed the boys where all these countries are. My copy of Operation World is not the most current edition, but that and our T-shirts can help us pray for the world.
And Brian McLaren has an article about the theology books he's reading by Latin Americans, Asians and Africans, like Rene Padilla, Alan Boesak, Emmanuel Katongole, Jon Sobrino, Mabiala Kenzo and Leonardo Boff. Their perspectives have helped McLaren see how limited our North American notions of "being missional" are. He says, "How can we preach about fine-tuning esoteric points in our systematic theologies without also addressing brute realities like corruption, injustice, and unemployment? As I read brothers and sisters from the global South, I can't sideline these matters any longer. My sense of what missional means is irrevocably deepened, broadened, transformed."
Oak Brook Community Church, a suburban church not far from my work, flies a different national flag every Sunday, and the congregation prays for that country that day. The mission task force gathers, prays for peace and runs the flag up the pole. "We want to demonstrate that God loves the whole world and that everyone is welcome here," says pastor Richard Glyman. The church started doing this five years ago, after 9/11, and has flown over 300 different flags so far.
Bob Roberts, pastor of NorthWood Church in Keller, Texas, and author of the books Transformation and Glocalization, asked his congregation to invert the shirt collar of the person in front of them, find the label and call out the name of the nation where the shirt was made. China, India, Vietnam, Mexico, Chile, Kenya, Dominican Republic and Spain were all mentioned before anyone said "USA."
I just checked the tags of my sons' shirts, and they're from Guatemala, Mexico, Dominican Republic and Indonesia. The InterVarsity shirt I'm wearing right now is from Bangladesh, and my T-shirt, which is from a mission trip to the Dominican Republic, was made in Honduras. So I just brought out our globe and showed the boys where all these countries are. My copy of Operation World is not the most current edition, but that and our T-shirts can help us pray for the world.
And Brian McLaren has an article about the theology books he's reading by Latin Americans, Asians and Africans, like Rene Padilla, Alan Boesak, Emmanuel Katongole, Jon Sobrino, Mabiala Kenzo and Leonardo Boff. Their perspectives have helped McLaren see how limited our North American notions of "being missional" are. He says, "How can we preach about fine-tuning esoteric points in our systematic theologies without also addressing brute realities like corruption, injustice, and unemployment? As I read brothers and sisters from the global South, I can't sideline these matters any longer. My sense of what missional means is irrevocably deepened, broadened, transformed."
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Teaching kids about scarcity
[This is a guest post from my wife, Ellen. Check out her posts on our family blog.]
I was listening to Midday Connection, and they were talking with William C. Wood, author of Getting a Grip on Your Money. The section I heard was on teaching kids about money. One of the things William mentioned was the importance of teaching kids the concept of scarcity, the idea that we can't always go out and get whatever we want. It struck me that this can be a hard concept to teach. I know that our family struggles with this.
I grew up in a family where we were frequently told, "We can't afford it." A trip to the ice cream store was a treat because we knew that we could not afford to go out and buy ice cream any time we wanted. Birthday cards from my extended family would contain one or two dollars. Now our kids get twenty dollars (or more!) in their birthday cards, and although trips to get ice cream are still special it's more because we don't want to spend $3 each for a cone than because we can't afford it.
I can tell that our five-year-old does not understand scarcity well. If he asks for something and we tell him that we do not have any he responds, "That's okay. We can go to the store and buy it." He has recently added, "You use your money, Mommy." The other day he tried to talk us into giving him $20 a week for his allowance (which is better than the 1 million dollars he originally proposed).
When our son asks for something at the store we will often say, "Okay, but you will have to use your own money." We hope this will help him begin to understand that you cannot always buy whatever you want and help him make wise choices. He is pretty savvy with his spending and won't buy something if he thinks it is too expensive or if he is saving up for something else.
The problem is when we want something we are often all to quick to run out to the store and buy it. Don't get me wrong, we are a fairly frugal family and are careful not to buy what we cannot afford. But we can afford more than we need and end up spending a lot of time at Target and Dominick's. We may know that we are not buying everything we want, but I imagine that this is not as obvious to our sons.
I recently tried to talk to Josiah about where money comes from (we have to earn it by working, etc.) and how a lot of people don't have enough money to go to the store and buy everything they need. I talked about some of the ways our family helps other people and he said, "We should share our money with other people." I thought, "This is great!" So I offered to show Josiah some places where he can give some of his money to help other people. He said, "I don't want to give them my money. Then I will not have money to buy my own things."
I guess we still have some work to do. Does anyone have suggestions for teaching kids about scarcity? How do we encourage them to help other people for whom scarcity is their day-to-day reality and not just a concept to learn?
I was listening to Midday Connection, and they were talking with William C. Wood, author of Getting a Grip on Your Money. The section I heard was on teaching kids about money. One of the things William mentioned was the importance of teaching kids the concept of scarcity, the idea that we can't always go out and get whatever we want. It struck me that this can be a hard concept to teach. I know that our family struggles with this.
I grew up in a family where we were frequently told, "We can't afford it." A trip to the ice cream store was a treat because we knew that we could not afford to go out and buy ice cream any time we wanted. Birthday cards from my extended family would contain one or two dollars. Now our kids get twenty dollars (or more!) in their birthday cards, and although trips to get ice cream are still special it's more because we don't want to spend $3 each for a cone than because we can't afford it.
I can tell that our five-year-old does not understand scarcity well. If he asks for something and we tell him that we do not have any he responds, "That's okay. We can go to the store and buy it." He has recently added, "You use your money, Mommy." The other day he tried to talk us into giving him $20 a week for his allowance (which is better than the 1 million dollars he originally proposed).
When our son asks for something at the store we will often say, "Okay, but you will have to use your own money." We hope this will help him begin to understand that you cannot always buy whatever you want and help him make wise choices. He is pretty savvy with his spending and won't buy something if he thinks it is too expensive or if he is saving up for something else.
The problem is when we want something we are often all to quick to run out to the store and buy it. Don't get me wrong, we are a fairly frugal family and are careful not to buy what we cannot afford. But we can afford more than we need and end up spending a lot of time at Target and Dominick's. We may know that we are not buying everything we want, but I imagine that this is not as obvious to our sons.
I recently tried to talk to Josiah about where money comes from (we have to earn it by working, etc.) and how a lot of people don't have enough money to go to the store and buy everything they need. I talked about some of the ways our family helps other people and he said, "We should share our money with other people." I thought, "This is great!" So I offered to show Josiah some places where he can give some of his money to help other people. He said, "I don't want to give them my money. Then I will not have money to buy my own things."
I guess we still have some work to do. Does anyone have suggestions for teaching kids about scarcity? How do we encourage them to help other people for whom scarcity is their day-to-day reality and not just a concept to learn?
Friday, February 23, 2007
Homelessness in suburbia, especially of teens
A few weeks ago I posted about the hiddenness of suburban poverty. Here's a follow-up - teen homelessness in the suburbs. A friend in Texas forwarded me an article, "Homeless in Suburbia" from the Houston Press, about the growing presence of homelessness in suburban Houston. Many teens find themselves homeless because they are fleeing abusive family situations or parental alcoholism or drug use, or have been kicked out. One student woke up to discover that his mother had killed himself, and her suicide note told him to live with his sister. There he was abused by his sister's boyfriend, so now he stays at a friend's house. The reporter writes,
The suburban homeless are largely hidden. They're more apt to sleep in cars or double up with friends than push grocery carts downtown. And the few existing programs to help them are severely limited. For instance, shelters serving domestic violence or sexual assault victims deny aid to hundreds each year due to lack of space, and families needing Section 8 housing assistance are put on a two-year waiting list.What's most interesting to me is the denial on the part of suburban civic leaders regarding the issue. One suburban mayor claims, "There is no homelessness in Katy -- none whatsoever." Another says that his city does not need a homeless shelter or public transit. (Naturally, they don't want anything to detract from their images of suburban affluence. It would be bad for business and investment.) The reporter continues:
Social workers in Fort Bend tell a different story, of extended families crammed into trailers with no running water. And school social workers say they are overwhelmed by rising numbers of teenagers from even the most upscale communities camping out on sidewalks, park benches and school campuses.
So often the kids get sent on to Houston, where there's generally a waiting list and no room.
If we are to seek the welfare of the suburbs, Christians and churches need to partner with the nonprofit social sector and help local governments recognize the reality of the issues. What's encouraging is that churches have taken the lead when local municipalities have focused their resources elsewhere. May God raise up Christians who will be active in churches and in public service to minister to the suburban homeless, orphan and widow.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Lenten reading and blogging
It's now Lent, and my friend Jana Riess blogged about what she's giving up for Lent - shopping. She has a nice plug for Lynne Baab's new book Fasting, which is certainly appropriate Lenten reading. Jana comments, "there's an interesting and unexpected chapter about 'other fasts' like the one Phil and I are doing. Some of the things she suggests are listening only to special sacred music during Lent, or going on a media fast, or taking a longer amount of time each day for Scripture study and personal prayer. The book profiles one extrovert who uses Lent for time alone, and a woman who gave up cosmetics because she felt she had too much pride in her appearance."
Jana also mentions that Lauren Winner tried to give up reading for Lent, but couldn't do it. I don't think I could do that either. On the other hand, one thing that has been a bit obsessive for me lately is that I keep on getting stacks of books from the library. Whenever I see a new book that looks interesting, I click over to my library's website and reserve it. Sometimes I get a dozen or more items a week. The result is that I end up not reading the books already on my nightstand. After all, the due date puts some urgency into reading the library books first, and the books I own just sit.
So for Lent this year, I will stop reserving books from the library. (I'll still pick up those that I have on reserve that come in, but no new holds for the next few weeks.) And I will focus on reading the books I already have, some of which have been there for months, even years. At the top of my list are two books that are intended for Lenten reading, commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The first is Miroslav Volf's Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, which was last year's Anglican Lenten study book, and the second is Samuel Wells's Power & Passion: Six Characters in Search of Resurrection, which is new for this year. Volf's book has been sitting by my bed since Urbana, along with the other books I picked up there, Philip Jenkins's The New Faces of Christianity and Mark Noll's The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. Without new library books coming in to distract me, I'll try to get through all of these and others that have been piling up.
The other area of my life that has been a bit overconsuming lately has been time spent in the blogosphere. A few months ago I thought I might give up blogging for Lent. Then I started wondering about that, because one of the things I appreciate about the blogosphere is the relational networks and connections. So to drop it entirely might feel like giving up certain friendships for Lent, and that doesn't seem right. On the other hand, I waste a lot of time just surfing and going from blog to blog, and much of that kind of blog reading and commenting does seem superfluous.
It's tricky, since there's overlap and it's hard to tell what kind of blog activity is healthy and what is counterproductive, but for Lent this year I'm going to try to scale back my time in the blogosphere. I'll still try to post somewhat regularly, but my posts may well be cut and pasted from pre-existing material, like my NPC seminars, or I may find alternatives for content - my wife just sent me a draft of a guest post that we'll post soon.
And one more area that I'm giving up for Lent is eBay, both buying and selling. (I just got a purple star for having 500 positive feedback. Yahoo!) My philosophy is that I only buy stuff on eBay when I have earned money from selling stuff on eBay, so the money in my PayPal account feels like free money, but it's still a sphere of consumerism that I'll give up this Lent. (Ron and Deb Rienstra have a nice post about their Lenten plans. Oops, does that count as blog surfing? Drat.) What are you giving up for Lent?
Jana also mentions that Lauren Winner tried to give up reading for Lent, but couldn't do it. I don't think I could do that either. On the other hand, one thing that has been a bit obsessive for me lately is that I keep on getting stacks of books from the library. Whenever I see a new book that looks interesting, I click over to my library's website and reserve it. Sometimes I get a dozen or more items a week. The result is that I end up not reading the books already on my nightstand. After all, the due date puts some urgency into reading the library books first, and the books I own just sit.
So for Lent this year, I will stop reserving books from the library. (I'll still pick up those that I have on reserve that come in, but no new holds for the next few weeks.) And I will focus on reading the books I already have, some of which have been there for months, even years. At the top of my list are two books that are intended for Lenten reading, commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The first is Miroslav Volf's Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, which was last year's Anglican Lenten study book, and the second is Samuel Wells's Power & Passion: Six Characters in Search of Resurrection, which is new for this year. Volf's book has been sitting by my bed since Urbana, along with the other books I picked up there, Philip Jenkins's The New Faces of Christianity and Mark Noll's The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. Without new library books coming in to distract me, I'll try to get through all of these and others that have been piling up.
The other area of my life that has been a bit overconsuming lately has been time spent in the blogosphere. A few months ago I thought I might give up blogging for Lent. Then I started wondering about that, because one of the things I appreciate about the blogosphere is the relational networks and connections. So to drop it entirely might feel like giving up certain friendships for Lent, and that doesn't seem right. On the other hand, I waste a lot of time just surfing and going from blog to blog, and much of that kind of blog reading and commenting does seem superfluous.
It's tricky, since there's overlap and it's hard to tell what kind of blog activity is healthy and what is counterproductive, but for Lent this year I'm going to try to scale back my time in the blogosphere. I'll still try to post somewhat regularly, but my posts may well be cut and pasted from pre-existing material, like my NPC seminars, or I may find alternatives for content - my wife just sent me a draft of a guest post that we'll post soon.
And one more area that I'm giving up for Lent is eBay, both buying and selling. (I just got a purple star for having 500 positive feedback. Yahoo!) My philosophy is that I only buy stuff on eBay when I have earned money from selling stuff on eBay, so the money in my PayPal account feels like free money, but it's still a sphere of consumerism that I'll give up this Lent. (Ron and Deb Rienstra have a nice post about their Lenten plans. Oops, does that count as blog surfing? Drat.) What are you giving up for Lent?
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
The theological questions of Lego Star Wars
Our five-year-old son, Josiah, has been playing the Lego Star Wars I and II videogames for several months now. It's a fun father-son activity for us, and we occasionally play with customized characters of "Josiah Padawan" and "Papa Jedi." We now have detailed conversations about the differences between R2-D2 and R4-P17 and the coolness of Mace Windu's purple lightsaber. One morning he greeted us with, "Guess what? I dreamed about Princess Leia." (He has not yet gotten to Return of the Jedi, so at least he wasn't dreaming about her in the skimpy Jabba's slave outfit.)
More significantly, however, Josiah has been peppering us with questions like these:
"Qui-Gon died. Will he come back later?"
"Why did Anakin become a bad guy?"
"Why did Padme have to die?"
"Why did the bad guys blow up Princess Leia's planet?"
"Why did Obi-Wan disappear? Did he die?"
"Why are the stormtroopers bad guys?"
"Will Darth Vader turn back to Anakin? Will he become a good guy again?"
So Star Wars has provided plenty of opportunities for us to talk with him about morality, justice, mortality, the afterlife, the reality of good and evil and the possibility of redemption. After playing through The Empire Strikes Back, I asked Josiah, "Do you understand what just happened? Darth Vader wanted Luke to become a bad guy. Luke said no, I don't want to be a bad guy. That's why he let go, so he could get away."
Josiah thought for a moment and said, "Luke made the right choice. He escaped. He did the right thing."
So Luke's escape from Darth Vader at Cloud City has become a parable for fleeing from evil and temptation. And it's interesting to me that Josiah likes playing Anakin (Boy) from Episode I and Anakin (Padawan) from Episode II, but he doesn't want to play Anakin (Jedi) from Episode III because that's the Anakin that turns bad. He'd rather play Obi-Wan, because Obi-Wan is always a good guy and never becomes a bad guy.
I'm proud of my little Padawan. May the Force be with him. Always.
More significantly, however, Josiah has been peppering us with questions like these:
"Qui-Gon died. Will he come back later?"
"Why did Anakin become a bad guy?"
"Why did Padme have to die?"
"Why did the bad guys blow up Princess Leia's planet?"
"Why did Obi-Wan disappear? Did he die?"
"Why are the stormtroopers bad guys?"
"Will Darth Vader turn back to Anakin? Will he become a good guy again?"
So Star Wars has provided plenty of opportunities for us to talk with him about morality, justice, mortality, the afterlife, the reality of good and evil and the possibility of redemption. After playing through The Empire Strikes Back, I asked Josiah, "Do you understand what just happened? Darth Vader wanted Luke to become a bad guy. Luke said no, I don't want to be a bad guy. That's why he let go, so he could get away."
Josiah thought for a moment and said, "Luke made the right choice. He escaped. He did the right thing."
So Luke's escape from Darth Vader at Cloud City has become a parable for fleeing from evil and temptation. And it's interesting to me that Josiah likes playing Anakin (Boy) from Episode I and Anakin (Padawan) from Episode II, but he doesn't want to play Anakin (Jedi) from Episode III because that's the Anakin that turns bad. He'd rather play Obi-Wan, because Obi-Wan is always a good guy and never becomes a bad guy.
I'm proud of my little Padawan. May the Force be with him. Always.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Whole Foods Market CEO's salary
I recently resubscribed to Fast Company, and their Feb. 2007 issue reprinted this letter from John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods Market, to his employees:
The board of directors has voted to raise the salary cap from 14 times the average pay to 19 times the average pay, effective immediately.... We are raising the salary cap for one reason only--to make the compensation to our executives more competitive in the marketplace.... Everyone on the Whole Foods leadership team (except for me) has been approached multiple times by "headhunters" with job offers to leave Whole Foods and go to work for our competitors. Raising the salary cap has become necessary to help ensure the retention of our key leadership.... This increase to 19 times the average pay remains far, far below what the typical Fortune 500 company pays its executives.... The average CEO received 431 times as much as their average employee received in 2004, while Whole Foods' CEO (me) received only 14 times the average employee pay in cash compensation.Most large companies also pay their executives large amounts of stock options in addition to large salaries and cash bonuses. The average corporation in the United States distributes 75% of their total stock options to only 5 top executives.... At Whole Foods, the exact opposite is true: The top 16 executives have received 7% of all the options granted while the other 93% of the options have been distributed throughout the entire company.
The second part of today's announcement has to do with my own compensation.... The tremendous success of Whole Foods Market has provided me with far more money than I ever dreamed I'd have and far more than is necessary for either my financial security or personal happiness.... I am now 53 years old and I have reached a place in my life where I no longer want to work for money, but simply for the joy of the work itself and to better answer the call to service that I feel so clearly in my own heart. Beginning on January 1, 2007, my salary will be reduced to $1, and I will no longer take any other cash compensation.... The intention of the board of directors is for Whole Foods Market to donate all of the future stock options I would be eligible to receive to our two company foundations.
One other important item to communicate to you is, in light of my decision to forego any future [pay], our board of directors has decided that Whole Foods Market will contribute $100,000 annually to a new Global Team Member Emergency Fund. This money will be distributed to team members throughout the company based on need.... The first $100,000 will be deposited on January 1, 2007, and requests will be considered after that date.
With much love,
John Mackey
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Reclaim the true Christian meaning of Valentine's Day!
Yesterday on a Christian radio station the host was talking about things to do for Valentine's Day with your sweetie, and it just seemed like an extended commercial with specific brand-name product placements for this or that kind of candy or flowers or whatnot. And it struck me that while Christians have long bemoaned the commercialization and secularization of Christmas and Easter, we haven't had as much of an outcry against the commercialization and secularization of Valentine's Day.
I think this is probably because many of us haven't really seen it as a Christian holiday. But it really is. As I mention in my book Singles at the Crossroads, St. Valentine (or Valentinus) was a priest and physician in third-century Rome. According to church tradition, Valentine was known for doing good deeds, caring for the poor, healing the sick. He was arrested during a persecution of Christians, and the Roman emperor Claudius Gothicus handed him over to a magistrate. While in custody, Valentine healed the magistrate's blind, adopted daughter, and the entire family was converted to Christianity. Upon hearing this, the emperor had Valentine beheaded--on February 14th.
From then on, Christians have commemorated this day in memory of Valentine's life of selfless service and ministry. And note what is missing from this narrative - it's not all about romantic couple love. Rather, the emphasis is on love of neighbor, agape service love, not romantic love. The romantic emphasis didn't come until the Middle Ages, and then of course it was heightened by 18th-century Romanticism and now exacerbated by modern Hollywood mythology and Western consumer culture. I think Valentine's Day should be reclaimed by Christians with a more holistic, trinitarian, agape understanding of love, not this narrow emphasis on romantic couple love.
After all, in Christian tradition, romantic love is not the highest love. Greater love has no one than this, that we lay down our lives for our friends. For much of church history, friendship love was acknowledged as the highest form of Christian love and service. And actually, romantic love was viewed suspiciously because it tended to be overly emotive, irrational and could create an idolatry of the love interest. So while we certainly should love and honor our spouses and significant others on Valentine's Day, we should only see this as one particular expression of the greater love that is agape love of neighbor.
Last night my wife said that she hadn't gotten me anything for Valentine's Day, and I said, "Great! Don't get me anything." Don't buy into the commercialism of the secularized holiday. I told her that if she really wanted to get me something, she could make a contribution to Compassion International, World Vision, Samaritan's Purse or something else, or find some other creative way to share God's love with the world. And instead of spending lots of money on an expensive date out, we're exercising stewardship by having a quiet date night at home. Not to diss romance entirely (both of us are NF romantic saps on the Myers-Briggs), but this is our modest attempt to celebrate Valentine's Day more Christianly.
So commemorate Valentine's Day by being other-centered and honoring others in the spirit of Christian love. Get a pack of children's valentines and give them to your friends and coworkers. Use the day as an opportunity to call, write or e-mail someone you haven't heard from for a while. Honor Christ by serving him in the spirit of St. Valentine. Happy Valentine's Day!
I think this is probably because many of us haven't really seen it as a Christian holiday. But it really is. As I mention in my book Singles at the Crossroads, St. Valentine (or Valentinus) was a priest and physician in third-century Rome. According to church tradition, Valentine was known for doing good deeds, caring for the poor, healing the sick. He was arrested during a persecution of Christians, and the Roman emperor Claudius Gothicus handed him over to a magistrate. While in custody, Valentine healed the magistrate's blind, adopted daughter, and the entire family was converted to Christianity. Upon hearing this, the emperor had Valentine beheaded--on February 14th.
From then on, Christians have commemorated this day in memory of Valentine's life of selfless service and ministry. And note what is missing from this narrative - it's not all about romantic couple love. Rather, the emphasis is on love of neighbor, agape service love, not romantic love. The romantic emphasis didn't come until the Middle Ages, and then of course it was heightened by 18th-century Romanticism and now exacerbated by modern Hollywood mythology and Western consumer culture. I think Valentine's Day should be reclaimed by Christians with a more holistic, trinitarian, agape understanding of love, not this narrow emphasis on romantic couple love.
After all, in Christian tradition, romantic love is not the highest love. Greater love has no one than this, that we lay down our lives for our friends. For much of church history, friendship love was acknowledged as the highest form of Christian love and service. And actually, romantic love was viewed suspiciously because it tended to be overly emotive, irrational and could create an idolatry of the love interest. So while we certainly should love and honor our spouses and significant others on Valentine's Day, we should only see this as one particular expression of the greater love that is agape love of neighbor.
Last night my wife said that she hadn't gotten me anything for Valentine's Day, and I said, "Great! Don't get me anything." Don't buy into the commercialism of the secularized holiday. I told her that if she really wanted to get me something, she could make a contribution to Compassion International, World Vision, Samaritan's Purse or something else, or find some other creative way to share God's love with the world. And instead of spending lots of money on an expensive date out, we're exercising stewardship by having a quiet date night at home. Not to diss romance entirely (both of us are NF romantic saps on the Myers-Briggs), but this is our modest attempt to celebrate Valentine's Day more Christianly.
So commemorate Valentine's Day by being other-centered and honoring others in the spirit of Christian love. Get a pack of children's valentines and give them to your friends and coworkers. Use the day as an opportunity to call, write or e-mail someone you haven't heard from for a while. Honor Christ by serving him in the spirit of St. Valentine. Happy Valentine's Day!
Monday, February 12, 2007
How global justice can transform suburban discipleship
After being in San Diego last week, I'm back home in Chicagoland now (and shoveled the driveway this morning - *sigh*). The convention went well, and if anybody is interested in hearing my seminars on suburban culture and the suburban church, CDs are available for purchase from the folks that recorded the conference talks. (And I should have been more clear in my previous posts that the general sessions can be listened to as free online webcasts.)
Something that's interesting to me is how conference interaction shapes the content of one's presentations. My second seminar about the suburban church covers some material about how the suburban church needs to have three spheres of ministry scope (suburban, urban and global) and how the suburban church can marshal its resources on behalf of global justice and mission. Mark Labberton's plenary talk about worship and justice included some themes that triggered thoughts of some additional dimensions to my own topic. So I adjusted my seminar on the fly and said something along these lines to add a new point of application:
Do the men in your church struggle with pornography? Okay, men in every church struggle with pornography. Here's an idea. What if your church started partnering with ministries that fight global sex trafficking?
Mark Labberton talked about International Justice Mission and how they work to free women and girls from the sex trade. These are often Christian girls who are kidnapped from their villages, imprisoned in brothels and forced into prostitution, being raped repeatedly every day. Often by Westerners. When we start realizing the effects of the global sex trade on our sisters in Christ, how they're the victims of our lust and exploitation, that should have an impact on our personal discipleship. If we're supporting ministries like IJM, we'll think twice about what we look at online. Global mission can transform suburban discipleship.
Something that's interesting to me is how conference interaction shapes the content of one's presentations. My second seminar about the suburban church covers some material about how the suburban church needs to have three spheres of ministry scope (suburban, urban and global) and how the suburban church can marshal its resources on behalf of global justice and mission. Mark Labberton's plenary talk about worship and justice included some themes that triggered thoughts of some additional dimensions to my own topic. So I adjusted my seminar on the fly and said something along these lines to add a new point of application:
Do the men in your church struggle with pornography? Okay, men in every church struggle with pornography. Here's an idea. What if your church started partnering with ministries that fight global sex trafficking?
Mark Labberton talked about International Justice Mission and how they work to free women and girls from the sex trade. These are often Christian girls who are kidnapped from their villages, imprisoned in brothels and forced into prostitution, being raped repeatedly every day. Often by Westerners. When we start realizing the effects of the global sex trade on our sisters in Christ, how they're the victims of our lust and exploitation, that should have an impact on our personal discipleship. If we're supporting ministries like IJM, we'll think twice about what we look at online. Global mission can transform suburban discipleship.
Friday, February 09, 2007
NPC and $100 update
I'm still in San Diego for the National Pastors Convention, and things are going well here. Yesterday we heard great plenary talks from IVP authors Ruth Haley Barton (author of Sacred Rhythms and Invitation to Solitude and Silence) and Mark Labberton, who spoke on themes from his new book The Dangerous Act of Worship about worship and justice. And my seminar this morning went well.
I don't have much time (folks are waiting to use the laptops here in the digital cafe) so let me just highlight that Craver has posted follow-up posts to his original $100 post that I tagged him with. He stopped by my office earlier this week to show me an anonymous letter that he got in the mail that said "Tag! You're it!"
Along with a $100 bill.
God has funded Craver's $100 project through the generosity of one of his blog's readers. Very cool. Here are some of Craver's comments on the money's impact at his church's food and clothing pantry:
The plates were donated by a local Red Lobster that donated 55 sets of test-marketed dinner plates, soup bowls, saucers, cups and the like. I just think that's fantastic. Kudos to all who participate in this ministry, from the local church to nonprofit organizations to corporate donors.
I don't have much time (folks are waiting to use the laptops here in the digital cafe) so let me just highlight that Craver has posted follow-up posts to his original $100 post that I tagged him with. He stopped by my office earlier this week to show me an anonymous letter that he got in the mail that said "Tag! You're it!"
Along with a $100 bill.
God has funded Craver's $100 project through the generosity of one of his blog's readers. Very cool. Here are some of Craver's comments on the money's impact at his church's food and clothing pantry:
We currently average 45 guests each Thursday. Because of the hard work of our frugal food pantry directors, and the many donations by local restaurants, grocery stores and the Northern Illinois Food Bank, we only spent $200 for one month’s worth of food!!
That means that this particular $100 paid for $40 worth of groceries for 45 people… twice! ($3,600 value)
On top of that, people got hot soup, made by our dear friend (For now…), plus all the regular stuff: coffee, tea and snacks, clothing, Bibles, devotional booklets, clothing… AND, a set of plateware to all who wanted. We had plates left over, so they will be donated to our local Crisis Pregnancy Care center.
The plates were donated by a local Red Lobster that donated 55 sets of test-marketed dinner plates, soup bowls, saucers, cups and the like. I just think that's fantastic. Kudos to all who participate in this ministry, from the local church to nonprofit organizations to corporate donors.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Hi from the National Pastors Convention
I'm in San Diego right now for the National Pastors Convention with about 1500 pastors and church leaders. They have a digital cafe here, so I'm blogging a bit. This is my first time attending; I was invited to come to do a couple of seminars, one on "The Suburban Christian: Understanding How Suburbia Shapes Us" and another on "The Suburban Christian: Ministry to and from the Suburbs."
What's interesting about being here is how many folks I've run into that I know, some of whom I have not seen for years. I saw one fellow that was in my InterVarsity chapter fourteen years ago who is now a pastor. And I also bumped into the former associate pastor of Blanchard Road Alliance Church, where I was on the leadership team of the singles group during the time that I was writing Singles at the Crossroads. It's a very small world.
The opening plenary featured Brian McLaren, who talked about the challenges of pastoral ministry and what has been helpful to him as he's faced criticism and difficult times. It was a well-done presentation of universalizing some of his personal experiences and applying them to the audience here. After all, some of the folks here may well have been some of those very critics. But all pastors face criticism and unfair attacks and can identify. (McLaren mentioned that his friend Bart Campolo told him something like, "The next time you get a hate e-mail, forward it on to me so that you're not the only one who has to feel the pain of it.") McLaren also said that we need to be friends to ourselves, because so many of us are our own worst critics and treat ourselves worse than we would treat our own friends or enemies.
All this is a reminder of how challenging is the call to pastoral church leadership. In many ways, this convention represents an alternate life of mine. In college I was a double major in biblical studies/theology as well as pastoral ministry, and at one point I thought I would go into pastoral church work. I took Greek and Hebrew, learned to exegete Scripture and prepare sermons, had classes on pastoral counseling and how to baptize, marry and bury people. For various reasons I ended up going to graduate school and then got into publishing, for which I'm tremendously grateful, but I think I've still brought a pastoral eye to my editorial work and feel an affinity for local pastors ministering in difficult circumstances. IVP's publishing vision is to serve the university, the church and the world with thoughtful Christian books, and we tend to interact more often with students and faculty in the academy than local pastors. So it's good to be here and see how we can better serve the church.
So anyway, if you'd like, you could pray for my seminars (Friday and Saturday morning), and I'd be quite appreciative. But more significantly, do pray for the pastors here and pray that they would find restoration and refreshment for their work. And pray for your own pastoral staff, and think of ways to encourage them in their ministry.
What's interesting about being here is how many folks I've run into that I know, some of whom I have not seen for years. I saw one fellow that was in my InterVarsity chapter fourteen years ago who is now a pastor. And I also bumped into the former associate pastor of Blanchard Road Alliance Church, where I was on the leadership team of the singles group during the time that I was writing Singles at the Crossroads. It's a very small world.
The opening plenary featured Brian McLaren, who talked about the challenges of pastoral ministry and what has been helpful to him as he's faced criticism and difficult times. It was a well-done presentation of universalizing some of his personal experiences and applying them to the audience here. After all, some of the folks here may well have been some of those very critics. But all pastors face criticism and unfair attacks and can identify. (McLaren mentioned that his friend Bart Campolo told him something like, "The next time you get a hate e-mail, forward it on to me so that you're not the only one who has to feel the pain of it.") McLaren also said that we need to be friends to ourselves, because so many of us are our own worst critics and treat ourselves worse than we would treat our own friends or enemies.
All this is a reminder of how challenging is the call to pastoral church leadership. In many ways, this convention represents an alternate life of mine. In college I was a double major in biblical studies/theology as well as pastoral ministry, and at one point I thought I would go into pastoral church work. I took Greek and Hebrew, learned to exegete Scripture and prepare sermons, had classes on pastoral counseling and how to baptize, marry and bury people. For various reasons I ended up going to graduate school and then got into publishing, for which I'm tremendously grateful, but I think I've still brought a pastoral eye to my editorial work and feel an affinity for local pastors ministering in difficult circumstances. IVP's publishing vision is to serve the university, the church and the world with thoughtful Christian books, and we tend to interact more often with students and faculty in the academy than local pastors. So it's good to be here and see how we can better serve the church.
So anyway, if you'd like, you could pray for my seminars (Friday and Saturday morning), and I'd be quite appreciative. But more significantly, do pray for the pastors here and pray that they would find restoration and refreshment for their work. And pray for your own pastoral staff, and think of ways to encourage them in their ministry.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Can you live on $2 a day?
This article excerpt comes from Tom and Christine Sine's Mustard Seed Associates newsletter. Gary and Ev Heard talk about their family's experiments with living on $2 a day (not in overall expenses, but in terms of food):
What a challenge. For my own family of four to have $2 per person per day for food would be $56 a week. Just looking at our most recent credit card statement (Dec/Jan), I see that we spent about $300 for the month at the grocery store. That's not too bad - it translates into roughly $75 a week. That amount includes some extra expenses for the holidays, but doesn't include eating out, which we try not to do more than once a week. I think I probably actually did live on $2 a day when I was a grad student living on ramen noodles, but it's been a few years since that was the case. (BTW, I know that many Christians practice fasting as a way of identifying with the global poor. One of my heroes, John Stott, intentionally never takes seconds at meals as an act of solidarity with the majority world.)
I've mostly been touting the $100 project recently, but is anybody up for this $2-a-day challenge?
During the first week of school last year, our family undertook an interesting challenge: to live on less than $2 per day per person for food. Aware that over one billion people in the world live each day on less than $1, we undertook the challenge as an effort to identify with the circumstances which they face. Being a family of five, we began our week with a group negotiation centered on how best to spend our $70 for the week. There were sacrifices which needed to be made, and a reflection on how we might construct a menu which would last a whole week. Our three children, ages 13, 11, 9 were keen participants!Two things were either eliminated from considerations very early, or curtailed severely: meat and dairy products. We also needed to shop around to get the best value for our limited resources. New veins of creativity began to flow. During the week we kept a family journal where we recorded comments and reflections: how we were feeling, what we were enjoying, what we were missing, things we were learning. We quickly realized that those who live on so little and whose resources must stretch to cover more than food require levels of creativity and a range of skills which do not come naturally to us.
Although this only went for seven days, the long term impact has been quite extraordinary on all of us. Ironically, our food bill isn't anywhere near what it was and we are eating healthier and a much more varied menu. I don't deny that more work is involved, but I have gone somewhat European in that I avoid supermarkets where I can and take enormous pleasure shopping at fresh produce markets and getting to know the vendors. The European tradition is also to eat what is in season, in which case you get the finest quality without as much quantity. This experience has turned our meals upside down.
Alongside our change of lifestyle, we have committed the savings from our normal food budget to a micro-enterprise project in a community in Africa. This project provides interest-free loans to people to allow them to set up a small business which allows them an opportunity to break out of the poverty cycle.
What a challenge. For my own family of four to have $2 per person per day for food would be $56 a week. Just looking at our most recent credit card statement (Dec/Jan), I see that we spent about $300 for the month at the grocery store. That's not too bad - it translates into roughly $75 a week. That amount includes some extra expenses for the holidays, but doesn't include eating out, which we try not to do more than once a week. I think I probably actually did live on $2 a day when I was a grad student living on ramen noodles, but it's been a few years since that was the case. (BTW, I know that many Christians practice fasting as a way of identifying with the global poor. One of my heroes, John Stott, intentionally never takes seconds at meals as an act of solidarity with the majority world.)
I've mostly been touting the $100 project recently, but is anybody up for this $2-a-day challenge?
Friday, February 02, 2007
Christianity Today review of The Suburban Christian
One of my colleagues just gave me a copy of the Feb. 2007 issue of Christianity Today, which has this review of The Suburban Christian:
How does a Christian live a faithful, others-engaged life in suburbia, a culture pervaded by consumerism, status-seeking, long commutes, and a dearth of community? Hsu, who has lived in suburbs nearly all of his life--and likes it--has created a seamless narrative of the socioeconomics, demographics, and spirituality of suburbia. Winsome stories tell of his personal grappling to live counterculturally.
Hsu and his wife, who both work in Christian publishing, live what seems to be a modest lifestyle with their two young sons. Still, as an admitted "book geek," Hsu recounts struggling with whether to buy more bookshelves or just give lots of his growing library away.
The Suburban Christian may invite comparisons with David Goetz's wisecracking, wry, and a bit jaded Death by Suburb. Hsu gives a more comprehensive, almost textbook, analysis, like a mentor--unassuming, humble, positive, hopeful.
Not all of Hsu's suggestions will resonate with every reader. "There's no one-size-fits-all" way to live intentionally for Christ, Hsu says.
Perhaps his most significant suggestion for optimum suburban living is simple: Try to live where you work and worship. He says this will help move us from anonymity to community--even in spiritually challenging suburbia.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
The hiddenness of suburban poverty
Charity Singleton just tipped me off to a news story on this morning's Morning Edition NPR broadcast about poverty in suburban Des Moines and the implications on social services. Here's Charity's summary:
As I just said in the comments to my previous post, when I was researching my suburbs book, I came across the statistic that 46% of people living below the poverty line live in the suburbs. And that figure is a few years old, so it doesn't surprise me that it's higher now. (I looked around the Census Bureau's site to see if I could find the report or news release about suburban poverty now being higher than urban poverty, but I couldn't find it offhand. Update: see here.) As Bob Lupton said in his book Renewing the City, "Poverty is suburbanizing."
Compounding the problem of poverty in the suburbs is the dynamic of the hiddenness of poverty in the suburbs - all the surrounding wealth and affluence masks the socioeconomic realities. It's in each local suburb's commercial interest to hide or minimize any poverty issues, since it's bad for business and new investment. But as new suburbs become new cities, old suburbs become old cities, with all the same challenges of infrastructure and poverty, compounded by the spread-out commuter culture.
There's nothing new under the sun. The biblical call to care for the orphan and widow, the poor and oppressed, the alien and the stranger certainly still applies to the modern suburban context. I live in the western suburbs of Chicago, and the county I live in, DuPage County, ranks as one of the most affluent in the country. But it also has a significant homeless population, many of whom are not immediately visible. I'm encouraged by organizations like DuPage PADS, which enlists an extensive network of churches and volunteers to provide shelter and meals. It's a great example of how the nonprofit sector and local churches can partner to minister to a community and seek the welfare of the suburbs.
And one more additional thought - this NPR article was yet another reminder of how car-dependent suburbia is, and as a corollary, how practical and essential car-based ministries can be for suburban churches. My wife and I have donated two of our previous cars to Willow Creek's cars ministry, which restores them and makes them available to single moms and others in need of transportation.
According to the census bureau, for the first time, more poor Americans live in the suburbs than in cities.
Today on Morning Edition, reporter Rachel Jones interviewed a poor woman in the suburbs of Des Moines, Iowa, who was having trouble getting ahead because of problems with her "new" car, which a friend sold to her for $75. Public transportation was nearly non-existent between her suburb and downtown Des Moines, where she could access social services. Like most suburbs, her home and her job were miles apart, which no sidewalks for walking and no local bus service. And the $75 car had already cost her more than $800 for insurance and registration, which she really couldn't afford.According to Jones, poor individuals are not the only ones struggling to deal with this new demographic. The suburban town and city governments are struggling to come up with the services their "new" constituents need. And though many of us have extensive networks of friends, family and resources that we can rely on in hard times, this is not true for everyone. A lot of Americans are just a divorce, hospitalization, or job loss away from really hard times. And many of those people now live in the suburbs.
As I just said in the comments to my previous post, when I was researching my suburbs book, I came across the statistic that 46% of people living below the poverty line live in the suburbs. And that figure is a few years old, so it doesn't surprise me that it's higher now. (I looked around the Census Bureau's site to see if I could find the report or news release about suburban poverty now being higher than urban poverty, but I couldn't find it offhand. Update: see here.) As Bob Lupton said in his book Renewing the City, "Poverty is suburbanizing."
Compounding the problem of poverty in the suburbs is the dynamic of the hiddenness of poverty in the suburbs - all the surrounding wealth and affluence masks the socioeconomic realities. It's in each local suburb's commercial interest to hide or minimize any poverty issues, since it's bad for business and new investment. But as new suburbs become new cities, old suburbs become old cities, with all the same challenges of infrastructure and poverty, compounded by the spread-out commuter culture.
There's nothing new under the sun. The biblical call to care for the orphan and widow, the poor and oppressed, the alien and the stranger certainly still applies to the modern suburban context. I live in the western suburbs of Chicago, and the county I live in, DuPage County, ranks as one of the most affluent in the country. But it also has a significant homeless population, many of whom are not immediately visible. I'm encouraged by organizations like DuPage PADS, which enlists an extensive network of churches and volunteers to provide shelter and meals. It's a great example of how the nonprofit sector and local churches can partner to minister to a community and seek the welfare of the suburbs.
And one more additional thought - this NPR article was yet another reminder of how car-dependent suburbia is, and as a corollary, how practical and essential car-based ministries can be for suburban churches. My wife and I have donated two of our previous cars to Willow Creek's cars ministry, which restores them and makes them available to single moms and others in need of transportation.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Prism magazine review of The Suburban Christian
Jenell Paris's blog tipped me off to the fact that the Jan/Feb 07 issue of Prism magazine (published by Evangelicals for Social Action) ran a review of The Suburban Christian, so I tracked down a copy from a colleague. The review is by Connally Gilliam, who contributes to the Common Grounds Online blog and whom I met briefly at the International Christian Retail Show in Denver last summer. She had stopped by the IVP booth for Common Grounds compatriot Kelly Monroe Kullberg's booksigning for Finding God Beyond Harvard, which I was project editor for. I later ran into a publicist I know at Tyndale who handed me a copy of Connally's excellent new book, Revelations of a Single Woman. Yes, everything is connected by just one or two degrees of separation these days. Anyway, here's Connally's review:
The Suburban Christian: Finding Spiritual Vitality in the Land of Plenty is part apologetic on behalf of believers living in the suburbs and part prophetic call to these same suburban believers to live differently. The book defends and challenges the same set of people with informed humility. In the course of 10 chapters, author Albert Hsu communicates that the suburbs are more than the sum of their stereotypes. They are neither bastions of isolated, whirlwind, commuting consumers disconnected from God and others nor Leave It to Beaver promised lands free of relational pitfalls, hidden seductions, and spiritual dangers. Rather, the suburbs and exurbs are, first and foremost, where over half of all Americans (of many ethnic backgrounds) live. And where people are, God is in fact showing up, redeeming, and transforming.
Hsu lays out a historic overview of the suburbs--their promise and their delivery (for good and for ill). He assesses the relative merits and demerits of everything from the rise in prominence (and size) of the single-family home to the emergence of the auto-dependent community, from the effects of "branding" on the choices we make to the contextualization of the suburban church. And he offers plentiful and practical advice to individuals, groups of friends, and churches on how to navigate the suburban jungle with an eye to God's kingdom.
Hsu's navigation principles are lodged in practicing the spiritual disciplines while developing (individually and as a worshipping community) an increasingly clear sense of vocation or calling. The unbounded nature of the suburbs--lacking both geographic center and strong sense of communal identity, while emphasizing both personal autonomy and material expansion--must be countered by a mindfulness of God's presence and a clear sense of intentionality, says Hsu. Suburbanites must deliberately choose how they will live (practicing hospitality, learning interdependence, intentionally limiting consumption), because--to put it in the vernacular--the best defense is a good offense.
In short, I liked this book. I wish it addressed more fully how the suburbanite who is committed primarily to the community around her can also be meaningfully involved with the visibly absent poor (my struggle). But on the whole, the book is a well-written reminder that neither country life nor city life is necessarily nobler. Rather, the noblest thing is to seek the welfare of the neighbors, community, metropolitan region, and global church God has placed around you, even if your place is in the suburbs.
Friday, January 26, 2007
$100 project becomes a challenge and an experiment
I just noticed that my invitation for others to join us in the $100 project has been picked up by several other places. Catherine Claire at BreakPoint's The Point blog invited their readers to join "The $100 Challenge" and suggest ideas for how $100 could be used creatively and productively for the kingdom. Several other BreakPoint bloggers have also given follow-up suggestions, some about various aspects of global justice and mission. And then Boundless Line, the blog for Focus on the Family's Boundless.org, picked up on it, calling it "The $100 Experiment."
For those of you joining in, let me just say that the idea has been circulating for some time and has been known as "The Kingdom Assignment" or other Christian versions of "paying it forward." And of course it all goes back to the parable of the talents. So it's nothing new, but I'm happy that a bunch of folks are giving the idea new life.
And by the way, if you're deterred by not having $100 available to invest, you might be surprised - several of my Calvin seminar participants "just happened" to get amounts of $100 after we found out that our official funding for the project wasn't available. So God may well provide you with the opportunity and the funds to do this.
Another way of looking at this: a blogger tagged her friends with the question, "What would you do with $100 to do the most good?" I'm no good at tagging people, since I never have any idea if anybody actually reads this blog, but let's see . . . how about Lisa and/or Dave at Strangely Dim (or Dave can post at his Loud Time), Mark Goodyear, L.L. Barkat, Craver, Margaret Feinberg. Go ahead, tag all your friends with some form of this question. Besides your usual giving or tithing, how would you use $100 for the sake of the kingdom, especially in ways that multiply its impact?
For those of you joining in, let me just say that the idea has been circulating for some time and has been known as "The Kingdom Assignment" or other Christian versions of "paying it forward." And of course it all goes back to the parable of the talents. So it's nothing new, but I'm happy that a bunch of folks are giving the idea new life.
And by the way, if you're deterred by not having $100 available to invest, you might be surprised - several of my Calvin seminar participants "just happened" to get amounts of $100 after we found out that our official funding for the project wasn't available. So God may well provide you with the opportunity and the funds to do this.
Another way of looking at this: a blogger tagged her friends with the question, "What would you do with $100 to do the most good?" I'm no good at tagging people, since I never have any idea if anybody actually reads this blog, but let's see . . . how about Lisa and/or Dave at Strangely Dim (or Dave can post at his Loud Time), Mark Goodyear, L.L. Barkat, Craver, Margaret Feinberg. Go ahead, tag all your friends with some form of this question. Besides your usual giving or tithing, how would you use $100 for the sake of the kingdom, especially in ways that multiply its impact?
Monday, January 22, 2007
What we learn from Paul's acknowledgments
My vision is extremely blurry today (more on that later), so I'm not in good shape to write much, so let me just excerpt an article I wrote that just went live over at TheHighCalling.org. Mark Goodyear is my editor over there, and if you haven't visited his blog yet, check it out to find out how he and his wife met as Ahab and Jezebel and got their first kiss captured on video. Anyway, here's part of my article:
I like reading the acknowledgments page in a book. I enjoy seeing the names of friends, family members, mentors, and others who comprise the community surrounding the author. There's a romantic myth of the author as solitary genius, the hermit who goes into a cave and throws out a masterpiece. Not so. Every book is the product of collaboration, and the acknowledgments are a window into each author's community.We see this in Scripture as well, especially at the end of Paul's letters. Romans 16 is an example of his "acknowledgments." There Paul greets twenty-nine individuals by name, from Priscilla and Aquila to Tryphena and Tryphosa, as well as many others included in general terms like "the church," "the household," "the other brothers and sisters," and "all the believers with them." He describes the recipients as his "coworkers" and "dear friends" who "work hard in the Lord."
Paul also mentions his immediate companions and coworkers—Tertius, who wrote the letter down. Phoebe, who delivered the letter to the Romans. Gaius, who hosted Paul. And other coworkers like Timothy and Sosipater. In other words, Paul is no lone ranger in his work. He is not an isolated individual. He is part of a particular community (probably in Corinth at the time of the writing), and he writes to another like-minded community (in Rome).
As E. Randolph Richards has pointed out in his book Paul and First-Century Letter Writing, ancient letter writing was not a solitary activity. Paul did not write letters in isolation, like we send off e-mails from our laptops or Blackberries today. Nor was he merely dictating letters to a secretary. In the first century, letters such as Paul's were often written in a communal setting, such as a patron's living room or workshop. Several people probably worked in the room together, interacting with the material as it was composed. Because of the expense of writing supplies, Paul and his coworkers would have bounced ideas off each other, honing and clarifying the concepts before carefully setting pen to paper.
For the rest, click here.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
$100 project: One example, and an invitation to join us!
A few months ago, I posted about the $100 project that my Calvin seminar is doing, where each of us has to find something meaningful and interesting to do with a hundred bucks and write about it. Got a lot of good ideas and suggestions. I liked Helen's idea of using the money to facilitate a community garage sale, but alas, it's not exactly garage sale season with winter in Illinois. Stacey sent a link to her church's website, where they reported on what folks did in a similar project with $10 bills. It was great to read about all the creative ways that people used their money and multiplied it for kingdom purposes; I was particularly amazed by the person who bought an old, antique Eveready flashlight for $10 and sold it on eBay for $1500. I never knew that there were such serious flashlight collectors out there.
Alas, my $100 is still sitting in an envelope on my dresser. I haven't done anything with it yet. Which means that functionally, I'm no better than the lazy servant that buried his talents in the backyard (an experience that one of my fellow Calvin participants is replicating). I suppose that that's a lesson in itself. It's convicting to realize that my inaction and procrastination puts me in the same company as the wicked and lazy servant that should have at least put the money in the bank. I am feeling more sympathetic to that third servant, and I'm wondering if he started to panic when his master's return approached. (The deadline for our project is supposed to be June 1, 2007.)
Anyway, we just got one $100 report from Deb Rienstra, the convener of our seminar. She's an English prof at Calvin and the author of So Much More and Great With Child, which is the most thoughtful, meditative, literary and spiritually profound book I've ever encountered on the topic of pregnancy, childbirth and parenting a newborn - if you're expecting or have a new baby, you simply must read this book! Here's an excerpt from Deb's blog post about her $100:
Her blog post also has some examples of the poetry that her project created. I'm very impressed with how concrete Deb's project was and the potential impact on young students. I still remember my first published work as a first-grader that appeared in my school district's "literary magazine," a poem that read, "Red is fire. Red is chalk. Red is like a finger talk." This was then followed by my third-grade contribution, when I was aspiring to be an astronaut:
Actually, would anybody else be interested in doing this along with me? I was realizing that one simple way that many of the people at Stacey's church multiplied their money was to enlist friends and family members to join them in their effort. I didn't offer an invitation on my last post about this, so let me do that here, with every eye closed, every head bowed - if you, dear blog reader, feel the call of the Holy Spirit to use $100 strategically and intentionally for the sake of the kingdom, take the plunge and join the movement! Take this up as a new year's resolution or challenge. Let me know that you're going to do something along these lines in the next six months or so, and blog about it on your own blog. And invite others to do the same. Let's see what happens!
Alas, my $100 is still sitting in an envelope on my dresser. I haven't done anything with it yet. Which means that functionally, I'm no better than the lazy servant that buried his talents in the backyard (an experience that one of my fellow Calvin participants is replicating). I suppose that that's a lesson in itself. It's convicting to realize that my inaction and procrastination puts me in the same company as the wicked and lazy servant that should have at least put the money in the bank. I am feeling more sympathetic to that third servant, and I'm wondering if he started to panic when his master's return approached. (The deadline for our project is supposed to be June 1, 2007.)
Anyway, we just got one $100 report from Deb Rienstra, the convener of our seminar. She's an English prof at Calvin and the author of So Much More and Great With Child, which is the most thoughtful, meditative, literary and spiritually profound book I've ever encountered on the topic of pregnancy, childbirth and parenting a newborn - if you're expecting or have a new baby, you simply must read this book! Here's an excerpt from Deb's blog post about her $100:
Here's what I did: I obliged my class of poetry-writing students to come up with an idea for how to spend the money. The first suggestions pretty much missed the spirit of the deal: "Let's throw the money at a homeless person. The sheer waste of it would be so poignant." "Let's build a zipline on campus." That's about when I shut down the class discussion and asked people to think about it and e-mail me later.
The next week, two women in the class independently came up with the same idea: to do a poetry workshop at a local elementary school. Now THAT, I thought, could be good.
So I worked with the Service-Learning Center at Calvin and contacted a teacher at the Montessori public school downtown: multi-ethnic student body, good share of at-risk kids, lower socio-economic profile, and not much funding for the arts. My students and I visited the school for two one-hour sessions on separate days. Each of my students worked with two or three fifth-graders. We had lesson plans and everything. After the two sessions, we took the "manuscripts" back to Calvin and turned them into a pretty nifty chapbook. We used the hundred bucks to make plenty of copies for everyone. The copy bill came to $106.25.
Her blog post also has some examples of the poetry that her project created. I'm very impressed with how concrete Deb's project was and the potential impact on young students. I still remember my first published work as a first-grader that appeared in my school district's "literary magazine," a poem that read, "Red is fire. Red is chalk. Red is like a finger talk." This was then followed by my third-grade contribution, when I was aspiring to be an astronaut:
In the solar system there are nineOf course, now Pluto is being demoted from planethood and other objects are now understood to be part of our system . . . but I find it significant that I still remember these poems, and somehow I've followed my vocational calling into Christian publishing. Anyway, kudos to Deb and her Calvin students for their initiative, and I hope they continue the effort in the future! And I'm still looking for something creative and missional to do with my $100. Any more ideas out there?
Planets born at the same time.
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, still far from the stars.
Uranus, Neptune, Pluto is last,
These are the planets, moving fast.
Actually, would anybody else be interested in doing this along with me? I was realizing that one simple way that many of the people at Stacey's church multiplied their money was to enlist friends and family members to join them in their effort. I didn't offer an invitation on my last post about this, so let me do that here, with every eye closed, every head bowed - if you, dear blog reader, feel the call of the Holy Spirit to use $100 strategically and intentionally for the sake of the kingdom, take the plunge and join the movement! Take this up as a new year's resolution or challenge. Let me know that you're going to do something along these lines in the next six months or so, and blog about it on your own blog. And invite others to do the same. Let's see what happens!
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