In memory of Robert E. Webber, 1933-2007

Last Friday afternoon Bob Webber died of pancreatic cancer. Both my wife and I studied under Bob. I took several classes from him while at Wheaton Grad School in the mid-90s, and then Ellen did a MA in Worship & Spirituality with him at Northern Seminary in the early 2000s. Bob was a visionary and a maverick, and students loved him or didn't. It was said that Bob just had one class that he reconfigured multiple ways, whether as Historical Theology or Christian Traditions or Theology of Worship or whatever. No matter the class, he always led us through the various stages of church history - patristic, medieval, reformation, modern, postmodern. He always wanted us to see the full sweep of our Christian heritage and bring us back to the experience and practice of the early church.

He was a champion of all things worship, editing the massive The Complete Library of Christian Worship and penning dozens of books on the topic. He launched the ancient-future movement of contemporary evangelicals rediscovering the riches of history and liturgy. Years ago he wrote Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, which chronicled how American evangelicals were discovering Anglicanism. In my own Anglican congregation, many folks have shared how they became Anglicans through Webber's influence.

Here's my favorite Bob Webber story. Every year in various classes, when talking about the history of evangelicalism, he would describe the evangelistic preaching methods of folks like Billy Sunday. He would launch into full evangelistic preacher mode, with dramatic heights of oration and convicting language. And to cap it all off, he would leap onto the desk at the front of the classroom and stand on top of it, bellowing at the top of his lungs, exhorting sinners to come to Jesus.

Well, in 1995 or so, in one of the classes I was sitting in, Bob worked himself up into a frenzy and launched himself above the table. But his shoes were slippery or something, and he lost his footing. He crashed to the floor, flat on his back. The class was aghast, shocked into silence, all of us wondering, "Was that supposed to happen? Was that part of the act?"

After a beat or two, Bob jumped back up and said, "I'm okay! I'm okay!" Then he more carefully climbed up onto the table and finished his spiel, to much applause and relief.

Bob was always a recovering fundamentalist. He would tell stories of his days at Bob Jones University, where he was called "Hollywood Bob" by the irked administration. Bob was allergic to all things modernist, and said that Enlightenment rationalism had so compromised the Christian faith that the postmodern turn and skepticism toward modernity was the best thing to come along in centuries. I remember challenging him in class on this point; my sense was that the genius of Christianity was that it was true and relevant no matter the era, that Christianity is rational and thus can be contextualized to a modernist era, just as it is also experiential and thus can be contextualized and relevant to a postmodern era. Bob didn't quite buy that, but I think his fundamentalist upbringing just made him incapable of accepting that any good could come of modernist forms of Christianity.

Bob, we'll miss you. You were always uneasy with the evangelical subculture, but evangelicalism is better for having had you with us.

Emerging Anglican posted these prayers in honor of Bob:

REMEMBER thy servant Bob Webber, O Lord, according to the favour which thou bearest unto thy people, and grant that, increasing in knowledge and love of thee, he may go from strength to strength, in the life of perfect service, in thy heavenly kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever, one God, world without end. Amen.

O ALMIGHTY God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, who by a voice from heaven didst proclaim, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; Multiply, we beseech thee, to those who rest in Jesus, the manifold blessings of thy love, that the good work which thou didst begin in them may be perfected unto the day of Jesus Christ. And of thy mercy, O heavenly Father, vouchsafe that we, who now serve thee here on earth, may at last, together with them, be found meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light; for the sake of the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Thinking bloggers and thinking about blogs

I've been awarded the Thinking Blogger Award not once, but twice! Thanks much to my colleague Craver VII as well as to Australian Simply Simon (from whom I learned that many of the issues facing North American suburbia are also present in Australia as well). Thanks, guys. I appreciate the affirmation, and I hope my blog posts live up to your praise.

Now I'm supposed to name five blogs that likewise make me think. Alas, how can I limit my choices to just five? This is actually why I don't list everything I read on my blogroll - I don't want to leave folks out, and I also don't want to have a list that goes on for pages (like my bookmarks). For that reason, for now, at least, my links list is very limited. Of course, I link to our family blog, Team Hsu, which my wife has recently claimed as her primary blogging domain. See her observations on disorderly spiritual disciplines, how many jeans people own and what body image looks like in other cultures. The only other personal blogs I link to are Loud Time and Strangely Dim by my pal Dave Zimmerman, who shares an office wall with me. He was blogging long before I entered the fray, and he's always been a good friend and colleague, so I've linked to him from the start. (I often use his Loud Time blogroll to hop to blogs I like to visit.)

Let me also highlight IVP's new corporate blogs, which just launched a few weeks ago. I contribute to Behind the Books, which gives behind-the-scenes thoughts and commentary related to the IVP Books publishing program. See my recent posts there about spiritual formation and the top eight reasons people buy books. We also have the Addenda & Errata blog for our IVP Academic line, as well as Andy Unedited, with thoughts about publishing from our editorial director, Andy Le Peau (whom I edited for his book, Heart. Soul. Mind. Strength., an anecdotal history of IVP).

So anyway, if I have to pick five blogs to commend for making me think:

1. I think the gold standard of thoughtful Christian blogging is Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed. Vital contributions to discussions on theology, biblical studies, the emergent church and much more. He's created an amazing go-to community for evangelical discourse and dialogue. I don't know how he manages to blog so much and so well on such a wide breadth of topics and issues. All the rest of us pale in comparison.

2. Jenell Williams Paris's The Paris Project is a favorite stop for me. Jenell and I knew each other way back in high school in the '80s, when we faced each other in our high school debate league and got to know each other at debate camp. (Yes, we are such geeks.) We reconnected in the '90s through the late, great Regeneration Quarterly and The Vine. She's an anthropology professor and always has astute observations about the academy, society, evangelical culture, motherhood and life in general. She just got a new job at Messiah College and also gave birth to Max - congrats, Jenell!

3. Helen Lee's Typical American Mom. Helen used to be on InterVarsity staff and worked at Christianity Today. I've intersected with her at various Asian American gatherings over the years and worked with her on her edited book Growing Healthy Asian American Churches. She recently had a series of thoughtful posts reflecting on the Virginia Tech shooting and its implications for the Korean American and Asian American communities.

4. Jana Riess is the religion reviews editor for Publishers Weekly, and her personal blog is The Review Revolution. We've been publishing industry friends for some years now, and she has some of the most insightful observations about religion publishing trends and the good, the bad and the ugly of book publishing. She recently posted a scathing review of The Secret, and awhile back wrote this hilarious rip on Biblezines.

5. A relative newcomer to the blogosphere is a colleague who is known in the office as Rebecca but otherwise known as Becky in the rest of her life. Her blog Please pass the cheese (I still have no idea what that means) wrestles with various topics of Christian life and discipleship, including women's ministries at her church and generosity and grace. She also posted an original unpublished Mark Noll poem "Scots' form in the suburbs" that was written for their church - a very moving picture of the power of the Eucharist in the lives of suburban people.

TheHighCalling.org blog tour

I've mentioned previously on this blog that I've written articles for TheHighCalling.org, a website dedicated to helping Christians integrate their faith and their daily work. The site just recently relaunched, and editor Marcus Goodyear invited me to be part of their blog tour. So let me encourage you to visit their site and explore the articles, Bible studies and other resources they have available there. They have material by all sorts of folks: theologians Darrell Guder and Bill Dyrness, spirituality writers Eugene Peterson and Emilie Griffin, biblical scholar and Jesus Creed blogger Scot McKnight, Fuller Seminary president Richard Mouw, literary writers Luci Shaw, James Schaap and Virginia Stem Owens, worship guru Robb Redman and Asian American chick lit author Camy Tang. A wide breadth of thoughtful people from various fields and disciplines - something for everyone.

Here's an excerpt of my most recent article there, "The 'I' in 'Community,'" in which I muse about the role of the individual in team settings:

On the one hand, there's the danger of elevating the group to the exclusion of the individual. This error tells individuals they are unimportant and interchangeable, replaceable and disposable, like cogs in a machine. On the other hand, teams can be derailed by strong individual personalities asserting their own self-importance. Star performers sometimes use a team merely as a vehicle for their own success.

The answer is to balance both individual and corporate identities. We see examples of this in the ministry of Paul. He did not go on missionary journeys alone if he could avoid it. Paul's standard operating procedure was to work in partnership, with Barnabas or Silas, or in a larger community, with people like Luke, Priscilla, Aquila, Timothy, Sopater, and Gaius. These colleagues were Paul's coworkers in their daily efforts and often his collaborators and cowriters in his letters. Paul mentored them in community, and then sent them on individual assignments, going places Paul could not go himself. For example, Timothy served as Paul's emissary to Thessalonica (1 Thess. 3:2), Phoebe delivered the epistle to the Romans (Rom. 16:1), and Titus was asked to troubleshoot in Crete (Titus 1:5). The strength of Paul's working community meant that his team members were well-qualified and equipped to take on their individual challenges.

The ultimate model for us is the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is simultaneously community and individuality. The Father sent the Son to do very specific individual tasks, and likewise the Spirit empowers us in ways that the Father and the Son do not. God is Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. God works as both community and individuals. Since we are created in God's image, we also work as individuals and in community. . . .

Go here to read the rest. Also, the following bloggers are also participating in this blog tour this week. Enjoy!

Gordon Atkinson, L. L. Barkat, Gina Conroy, Craver VII, CREEations, Milton Brasher-Cunningham, Mary DeMuth, Karl Edwards, Emdashery, Every Square Inch, Green Inventions, Amy Goodyear, Marcus Goodyear, Al Hsu, Jennwith2ns, Charles Foster Johnson, Mike McLoughlin, Eve Nielsen, Naked Pastor, Ramblin Dan, Charity Singleton, Stacy, Camy Tang, Writer… Interrupted

Bottled water as a Christian stewardship issue

The topic of bottled water has come up several times in the past few months. I first read a Christian Century article that talked about how various Christian groups are now campaigning against bottled watter on moral grounds, that water should be freely accessible and not restricted to those who can afford it. Here's an excerpt:

In the developing world, Carmichael said, water is being sold as a commodity where the resource is scarce. On the rationale that bottling water takes water resources away from the poor, the environmental issue has become an important one for people of faith, Carmichael said. "The moral call for us is not to privatize water. Water should be free for all."

. . . The U.S. leads the world in bottled-water consumption. . . . At the same time, one-third of the world's population lives in water-stressed conditions. That proportion will double by 2025, according to a 2006 United Nations report on water scarcity. Water is scarcest in arid developing countries plagued by drought and pollution, such as South Africa, where agriculture fuels demand.

Then Ed Gilbreath's blog mentioned that

our capitalism has become more about creating new markets by manufacturing artificial needs. And one of these “manufactured needs,” he contends, is the $10 billion bottled water industry. Sadly, hardly any of that money makes its way to Third World countries that don’t have the luxury of unpolluted water out of a faucet.

And then the Chicago Sun-Times reported:

It takes 1.5 million barrels of oil -- enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year -- to make the plastic bottles to meet Americans' demand for bottled water, according to the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., environmental think tank.

The kind of plastic most commonly used for water bottles -- polyethylene terephthalate, or PET -- is recyclable. But consumers recycle just one of every five bottles they drink, with the rest ending up in landfills, said Pat Franklin, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute, a Washington group that promotes recycling.

And bottled water is not significantly better for you than tap water. In fact, it may be worse for you, since there are no regulations or standards for how bottled water should be filtered or free of pathogens, whereas tap water is well-regulated. The Sun-Times reports, "The NRDC tested more than 100 types of bottled water and found 'spotty' quality, with a third of the brands containing contaminants such as arsenic in at least some samples, said Adrianna Quintero, an attorney for the group. 'The problem with bottled water is we really have no way of knowing what we're getting,' Quintero said."

As a result of all this, I've been persuaded that this is an issue that Christians should be concerned about. Sure, it's better to drink bottled water than soft drinks. But the commoditization of water is creating an unnecessary consumer product, and evidently the bottled water industry is not doing much to provide increased access to clean water in disadvantaged areas of the world.

So if you drink bottled water, please recycle your bottles. Better yet, just fill a reusable bottle with tap water. Save the money you would otherwise spend on bottled water and direct it in ways more beneficial for people in need of clean water.

Wheaton Theology Conference: Tony Jones, the strike zone and the emergent conversation

At the Wheaton Theology Conference, Emergent Village's Tony Jones gave an evening plenary presentation about hermeneutics and orthodoxy. His main premise was that "orthodoxy is an event," not something that can be distilled into a creedal formulation or a statement of faith. Jones argued against the workability of the Vincentian canon of believing "that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all," saying that virtually nothing meets that standard. He used the analogy of baseball's strike zone to argue that in praxis, the de facto strike zone is never what baseball's official rules say that it should be - instead, it tends to float low and outside. Jones argued that despite the dissonance between theory and practice, the community of baseball players, umpires and fans create a strike zone that is workable in day-to-day play.

During Q&A, however, several questioners pressed Jones to answer, "How can I know if something is in the strike zone or not?" And Jones was rather evasive on this point. He wouldn't commit himself to saying what determines the strike zone. (I thought this would have been a nice place to suggest the Wesleyan quadrilateral of Scripture, tradition, reason and experience.) So even as Jones refuted charges of relativism, he still left the audience wondering what would actually qualify as orthodoxy, whether the Nicene creed or the Trinity or the canon of Scripture.

Now, I'm certainly not a rabid anti-Emergent type. And Jones's talk was helpful in understanding why Emergent has been notoriously difficult to pin down on certain things - they have resisted writing their own "statement of faith" because they say that all such statements are imperfect, imprecise (and even misleading) documents. But while I appreciate Jones's observation about the flexibility of praxis, I think his overall model for understanding orthodoxy is ultimately self-defeating. Even if we concede the metaphor of a flexible strike zone that is regulated by the community, a baseball game can't be played unless certain norms are defined. A pop fly lands either fair or foul. A runner is safe or out. So, yes, there is a certain degree of flexibility and ambiguity in Christian life, doctrine and praxis. But some things simply must be defined as orthodox or unorthodox, whether bodily resurrection or trinitarian Godhead or whatnot.

Instead of deconstructing the Vincentian formula, I think it would have been more constructive to explore the variously attributed phrase, "In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, in all things, charity." I think this accounts for a flexible strike zone of nonessentials that Christians continue to disagree over (predestination vs. free will, church polity, millennial positions, etc.) and baseline essentials that constitute orthodoxy ("We believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth . . ."). The challenge, of course, is that what one group holds as essential is deemed nonessential by others. Even so, having these categories feels more helpful to me than a claim that lack of consensus on some things means no consensus on anything.

What was interesting was that the audience's response to Jones's presentation was either love it or hate it. Many folks were nodding along in affirmation, while others were shaking their heads and groaning aloud. I chatted with several theologians afterward who felt that the talk had been a disaster, that Jones shouldn't even have been invited. (Jones himself admitted his ambivalence about presenting there.) But my own take is that I'm glad Jones presented, because the professional theologians need to hear firsthand the kinds of issues that are being discussed in the emergent conversation. If folks don't like what Jones is saying, then it's not enough to critique him or dismiss him out of hand - they need to engage the conversation and contribute to the dialogue in ways that are both faithful to the tradition but also can be received by the various communities. All hermeneutics are local, says Jones - and so is all theological discussion and dialogue. So let the conversation continue.

Praying for Virginia Tech

I've been sitting here reading news reports and blog accounts of yesterday's shootings at Virginia Tech, and like after Columbine or 9/11, I've been rather immobilized. It's just bizarre that we can read blogs by students who were there, or victims' MySpace pages. I just read a post from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship that includes some prayer requests that come directly from the IV chapter at Virginia Tech:

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After the campus was opened up and declared safe, Wes and fellow staff members Lindsey Jones and Robert Howe concentrated on being available to the students who were still in shock from the events. “We walked around campus all afternoon, comforting people.”

Facing the inevitable “Where is God?” questions that are posed after tragedies like this, Wes says, “God is comforting those who mourn. There’s a lot of love on the campus right now.”

He’s mobilizing a group of students to get out and minister to other students. “We want to go around and offer our ear and our comfort to anyone who’s still left on campus,” he says. “I am deeply encouraged by the love and comfort that our students give to each other and their friends. The Body of Christ is truly at work here.” Wes says the InterVarsity chapter has some specific prayer requests:

• Pray for the body of Christ, through the churches and campus ministries, to be united in expressing the hope we have in God.
• One freshman involved in the fellowship lost a roommate who was killed in the shooting.
• One student in the fellowship overslept and missed his class in Norris Hall during the shootings. He lost his professor, and four of his classmates were wounded.
• One senior in the fellowship was in a classroom in Norris Hall during the shootings. With the help of some classmates, he set up a barricade to prevent the shooter from entering the room. The shooter fired shots at the door, but failed to enter.
• One junior in the fellowship is a resident advisor in West Ambler Johnston Hall. She was a good friend to one of the victims who was murdered in the residence hall. The victim was a fellow resident advisor.

Many students left campus right after the shootings, but others remain. Wes and the staff of other campus ministries are preparing for a Wednesday mid-day memorial service. “After an intense and painful day, we are in mourning,” he says. “Thank you for your prayers and for sharing in our pain.
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Wheaton Theology Conference: How the early church grew

This past week was the annual Wheaton Theology Conference, cosponsored by InterVarsity Press. This year's theme was "Ancient Faith for the Church's Future," exploring how the early church's theology and praxis intersects with our contemporary context.

One session that I found particularly interesting was presented by Alan Kreider of Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, who talked about the early church's approach to evangelism. In summary, the early church was not actually very "evangelistic" by our terms. The patristic literature did not emphasize the Great Commission. They didn't have official evangelists, missionaries or mission boards. They did not have exhortations to evangelism (though they had exhortations to martyrdom!). They did not have prayers for the conversion of pagans, though they had prayers asking for God's help to love their pagan neighbors and enemies. And in certain eras, church worship was actually closed to visitors, with deacons at the door serving as bouncers, restricting entrance to the unbaptized. Not the most seeker-sensitive approach to ministry!

And yet the early church grew and grew and grew, even without intentional evangelistic strategy or ministry. How? By being the most attractive community in the Roman Empire. The early Christians rescued abandoned babies and raised them as their own. They gave dignified burials to all, regardless of economic status. They cared for the sick; instead of abandoning the cities in times of plague, they stayed and cared for the sick and dying, even if it meant their own deaths. It was said of the early Christians that "they alone know the right way to live."

It wasn't until after Constantine that conversion became a matter of advantage rather than attraction, or eventually by compulsion. Only after Constantine did people reject the church on moral and ethical grounds and begin to accuse Christians of hypocrisy. Prior to that, the church was known as the people of compassion, love and peace.

It was interesting to ponder how the church could recover that kind of pre-Constantinian attractiveness in our post-Constantinian, post-Christian, postmodern context. For those of us who have struggled with being "evangelistic," it's encouraging to know that the early church grew not because they were distributing gospel tracts but because they were practicing hospitality, neighborliness and social concern for the poor and marginalized. That still seems to me to be a prophetic countercultural stance in today's context.

Discussing suburbia

Bloggers L.L. Barkat and Charity Singleton are blogging about The Suburban Christian, and they've posted some thoughts relating to the intro and chapter 1. L.L is subfused (by which she means that she is confused about the meaning of suburban) while Charity is calling herself a subruralurbanite.

It's interesting that both of them find themselves in contexts where the lines between urban and suburban are blurring; what's true of L.L. in New York and Charity in Indianapolis seems to be true nationwide. New suburbs (exurbs, edge cities, etc.) are becoming new cities, while old suburbs are becoming old cities. Cities are becoming more suburban in form, and suburbs are becoming more urban. And even small towns and rural areas are suburbanizing.

(BTW, the fact that suburbia is confusing popped up yesterday. I was at my local library picking up several dozen books that had come in, and the librarian recognized me and asked me about my own writing. I explained that I had written books about suburbia, grief and singleness and was starting to tell her a little about each, and she said, "Now, that's part of the former Yugoslavia, right?" I gave her a blank look. She clarified, "Serbia? You wrote about Serbia?" Serbia, suburbia, whatever. Now, suburbia in Serbia, that would be a topic. :-)

If you'd like to join in on these discussions but don't have a copy of the book, the intro and chapter 1 are both available online as free PDFs here. I'm curious - what kinds of contexts do you find yourself in? Suburban, urban, rural, or some sort of hybrid of them all? If you have migrated from one kind of context to another, what characteristics or traits do you see as different from one to the other?

He is risen indeed!

I have to say that my Lent was not as disciplined as I had hoped. I was planning on cutting back on time in the blogosphere and giving up eBay and library reserves so I would have more time to read particular books that had been sitting for a while. Alas, during Lent several blog controversies erupted that I just had to follow online. While I refrained from selling on eBay, I did make several purchases, due to the release of a new wave of gaming pieces that I collect. And I didn't read all the books I had hoped to read, though I did get through quite a few. (I also now have a huge backlog of reserves at the library - over 100 items, with several dozen awaiting me or in transit already.)

I also have to say that Holy Week was a little exhausting, both physically and emotionally. After services for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Saturday vigil and Easter morning, I was pretty beat and also experiencing emotional whiplash. (It was also my younger son's 2nd birthday yesterday as well, so we had a combined Easter/birthday dinner with family.) As an Enneagram Seven, I realized anew that Good Friday in particular is a challenge for me. My inclination is to want to have fun and to take joy in life, but Good Friday means that I need to recognize the gravity of Christ's suffering, pain and death, as well as the suffering of the world around us.

So after this Lenten season of refraining from "alleluias," it was a joy to be able to celebrate and declare, "Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!" It is certainly true that we don't fully appreciate the joy of the resurrection without walking through the crucifixion first. At the National Pastors Convention a few months ago, Lauren Winner made a passing remark about how our society tends to deny or minimize death, so we don't really understand how significant the Christian claim of resurrection and new life is.

Ellen and I have been pleased to see how our older son has been engaging the Lenten/Easter journey. We had a Lent banner with readings and felt ornaments each night, and our bedtime Bible story book just "happened" to be timed perfectly for Holy Week and Easter, with stories falling on just the right days, even though we hadn't planned it that way in advance. Josiah really seems to be grasping the uniqueness of the Christian story, that Jesus triumphed over death in a way different from Obi-Wan Kenobi's postmortem appearances in Star Wars.

(Side note: One of our friends from church, Michelle, has started babysitting for us, and Josiah is enamored with her. Just before our Saturday evening Easter vigil service, Josiah told me, "I like Jesus more than anyone." I said, "That's great." Then he said, "But I like Michelle more than Jesus." Oh, boy.)

At any rate, I'm so glad that we are now on this side of the resurrection, both in this particular church year as well as in salvation history in general. And I'm thrilled that our five-year-old can exult with us, "He's risen!" He is risen, indeed. Alleluia!

A $100 project update

[This is an entry my wife posted on our family blog.]

Awhile ago Al blogged about the $100 project and invited people to join in and blog about their experience. I usually try not to talk about my charitable giving. If I hear Al mention a charitable gift we have given, even in passing, I usually elbow him and mutter "right hand, left hand!" (a reference to Mt 6:3). So, blogging about what I did for the $100 project feels a little awkward. And yet, for some reason, it also feels important to join in the project and to share my experience with others.

When Al first posted his $100 project blog, I assumed that his $100 counted as mine too. We're married and most of our charitable giving is done in both of our names. So I figured I would help Al decide what we should do with our $100 and that would be all. Then I received a $100 honorarium for leading worship at a retreat. I starting to think about how I could spend the money. I could buy more stamps and other card making supplies, or I could use it towards an anniversary gift for Al... And then a quiet whisper, "You know, its $100. Remember Al's blog. You could give it away."

My first response was not very nice. "Give it away!? But this is one of the few times I earn extra money that I can justify spending on me." I didn't have any immediate opportunities to spend the money anyway, so I put it aside and started to pray about it. I didn't pray particularly often or very fervently, but I did ask God what I should do with the money. Should I give it to an organization or should I find a more personal way to give the money to someone in need? Should I use it to help poor people, people with disabilities, or something else? Was giving to an organization instead of finding something local and more personal a cop-out?

Then I began to notice that one organization was coming to my attention more frequently than usual. While reviewing a video for work, I saw a segment about International Justice Mission (IJM). Shortly after that I read a brief news blurb about a successful mission that IJM accomplished in freeing children who were enslaved in the sex industry. I am familiar with IJM because the publisher I work for publishes Good News About Injustice by Gary Haugen, the president and CEO of IJM. I had also heard someone from IJM speak at the Urbana 06 Student Missions Convention. Finally, last week Al was reading Terrify No More, a book documenting the events leading up to, and surrounding, IJM’s raids in the notorious Cambodian village of Svay Pak where their workers rescued 37 underage victims of sex trafficking, many of them under the age of 10. I read a few chapters before we had to return the book to the library and made my decision.

Since the work of IJM includes a few different areas that I am particularly concerned about (injustice, children in need, slavery, sex trafficking) and since IJM seems to be coming to my attention more frequently than usual (something God often uses to catch my attention), I decided to give my $100 to them. I imagine that $100 is a small amount for IJM in comparison to what they need, but I hope God will use my small gift to help rescue people who are experiencing injustice and help on their journey to find hope and healing.

Lisa McMinn review of The Suburban Christian

Last year I blogged about sociologist Lisa McMinn's excellent new book The Contented Soul, and just this morning I stumbled across her review of The Suburban Christian. I have no idea when this review came out or how long it's been available, so maybe it's old news, but here's part of it:

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Hsu’s message is an important one, and he is a good person to give it. Hsu has a balanced appreciation for and caution about the suburbs. Christian suburbanites need, after all, more than my cry to “flee, flee while you can!” I was particularly humbled and challenged by his reminder that the suburbs are here to stay, and that we need Christians to bring something of the light of Christ to the darkness within the suburbs every bit as much as we need Christians in the city, or in rural communities, to do the same. Besides, there is power in the suburbs—money, commerce, economic and political clout. And we do need Christians to actively channel that power toward good ends that impact people far outside of the suburbs.

Hsu wisely and carefully challenges ways Christians can be more intentional about how they live and think about life in the suburbs. His tone is vulnerable and inviting, educational, and punctuated nicely with personal illustrations. He talks about the individualism of the suburbs—the loss of community and even of a sense of neighborliness because suburbanites tend to spend so much time commuting, consuming activities and things, or shutting themselves up in their air conditioned homes. Suburbanites drive to go to work, to worship, for their entertainment, and to shop. Even if they wanted to walk, the streets are not usually conducive to it. In every chapter Hsu offers some practical steps suburbanites can take to minimize the negative characteristic he has just discussed. Occasionally these seem trite—not particularly helpful except to offer readers something to do. Other times his recommendations are substantial, offering readers significant suggestions for how they can live in more Christlike ways in the suburbs, that is, in ways that pursue justice and mercy.

In Hsu’s discussion about consumerism, he talks about how distant consumers have become from the producer of our various goods: the farmer and the food we eat, the seamstress and the clothes we wear. He calls us to a more conscientious consumption, one that requires us to become better informed about where products come from and the exploitive practices under which they are made—knowledge that encourages us to choose to consume locally when we can, and that counters the entitlement mentality that blurs the line between what we need and what we want. Hsu’s topics include product branding, megachurches, and attempts to create community at places like Starbucks (which is a gathering place of sorts—filling a gap left with the absence of other civic gathering places—but which is still, after all, primarily a place of consumption).

He also addresses challenges to the spiritual life. People in the suburbs seldom experience scarcity and that makes us less likely to depend on God for provision. This shapes how we think about ourselves in relation to God and others. We can escape most struggles and hardship, and we can develop an indifference toward God as our provider, protector, and sustainer. Hsu invites readers to create space for God, to rediscover or learn how to sense God’s presence, and to remember our place in God’s created order. He reminds us that we are part of an interconnected whole that includes urban, suburban, and rural communities, and also global communities.

The Suburban Christian is inspiring and hopeful, even as it also challenges assumptions and raises awareness of some of the pitfalls of suburban life. I recommend it particularly to those residing in the suburbs, though much of what he says also applies to those of us living in small towns and urban areas.
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P.S. I also just came across this brief snippet from Evangelicals for Social Action: "Albert Y. Hsu, The Suburban Christian: Finding Spiritual Vitality in the Land of Plenty (Downers Grove: IVP, 2006). This book is for two kinds of people. The first is for the Christian who lives in the suburbs but who desires to be a player in God’s agenda in the city. The second is for the Christian who lives in the city and who tends to err on the side of thinking that urban spirituality and ministry are superior to the suburban. While this book calls suburbanites to live responsibly, it more importantly minimizes urban versus suburban scenarios and calls for interdependence in ministry."

Acts 20 on missional uncertainty and clarity

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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?

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.

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?

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.

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