Straw poll answers, and branding intentionality

Okay, here are where these straws are from:

- a green straw: Starbucks
- a white straw with red and yellow stripes: McDonald's
- a red straw: Burger King
- a white straw with yellow stripes: Wendy's
- a black straw: Panera
- an orange straw with pink stripes: Dunkin' Donuts
- a blue straw: Culver's
- a white straw: Subway

When I used this exercise at the Willow Creek conference last week, since folks were from all over the country, some of the guesses were things like Whattaburger, Sonic, In-N-Out and Carl's Jr. Funny to hear regional variances. The one person who correctly identified the Culver's straw was from Wheaton, Illinois.

Several of these straws had the brand name and logo preprinted on the wrappers. Only a few chains had generic translucent straws with plain white wrappers - Chipotle, Boston Market, maybe Quiznos. Most restaurants had straws with color schemes that reinforced their brand identities.

It's scary to me how distinctive and intentional the branding is. If I say "little pink plastic spoon," you know it's from Baskin Robbins. If you see a yellow napkin, chances are you'll recognize it as being from Wendy's. Remember sporks from KFC?

I remember during grad school one of my media theory classes analyzed a Pepsi commercial featuring Cindy Crawford, and we noted that her white tank top, blue jeans shorts and red car reinforced the white, blue and red color scheme of the Pepsi can. That had to have been intentional (and was probably also a not-so-subtle appeal to American patriotism). Later on, Pepsi made their cans blue, in an attempt to claim blue as their brand identity the way that Coca-Cola has claimed red. (And though it is an urban legend that Coca-Cola created Santa Claus to reinforce their ubiquitous red and white look, Coca-Cola's advertising certainly helped popularize images of the red-and-white Santa.)

At Willow Creek, and a straw poll

I'm posting this from the Willow Creek Group Life Conference, where I just presented two back-to-back workshops on "Building Community in Suburbia." Things went well in both sessions, with some good interaction and discussion. One fellow mentioned to me how his church frames their ministry in terms of being good neighbors to the community, getting involved with the local fire department, park district, civic organizations and such. He said that this community involvement has been more fruitful than exhorting church members toward individualistic evangelistic witness. I think that's the power of the witnessing community. When churches and Christian communities are corporately involved in the life of their local neighborhood and municipality, that often speaks more loudly than anything we do as individual Christians. Not to discount the efficacy or importance of personal evangelism, but I think it's essential these days for churches to corporately invest in their local areas and seek the welfare of their suburbs.

One of the things I talked about was the importance of local geography and neighborhood, and a fellow mentioned to me that he knows a guy who's selling his multimillion-dollar house in order to buy a small condo and relocate closer to his church's ministry context. Which is a great example both of intentionality in neighborhood location and parish (to counter commuter culture) and also of downshifting one's lifestyle (to counter consumer culture).

It's interesting to be here at Willow Creek, because even though they're near me here in the Chicago suburbs, it's been a few years since I've visited. They in many ways have been the flagship church of all suburban churches. They do many things very well; indeed, much of their growth and success can be attributed not only to their creative and seeker-sensitive approaches, but to a more fundamental commitment to being incarnationally suburban in their ministry. And they are currently shifting away from an affinity-based ministry approach to a more geographic-locality-based ministry approach, learning from multi-site churches like Community Christian Church. (I affirm both approaches, since different churches and contexts usually require different things, but I applaud the geographic shift in emphasis.) I have some cautions about Willow and other suburban megachurches, as I've detailed in my book, but it's good to be here and see the national and global reach of their ministry.

At any rate, when I started writing this post (at a computer in their speakers' lounge), my main purpose was to give a quick straw poll. As in literal straws. Some time ago I realized that restaurants coordinate their straws to reinforce their overall brand identity. So this weekend Josiah and I went around to various restaurants to collect straws, which I used as an illustration in my workshops here. So, can you identify the sources of the following?

- a green straw
- a white straw with red and yellow stripes
- a red straw
- a white straw with yellow stripes
- a black straw
- an orange straw with pink stripes
- a blue straw
- a white straw

These are all from fast food or quick-casual restaurants in the Chicagoland area. Take your guesses! No prizes, but you can have the satisfaction of successfully identifying how much consumer culture and corporate branding has permeated even the details of restaurant straws.

On speaking and writing, teaching and learning

I'm in the middle of a busy season - nine speaking engagements in six weeks. Six of those are the Sunday school class I'm guest teaching at Immanuel Presbyterian (which one of the class members blogged about). This past Sunday I also gave an hour-and-a-half presentation at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in St. Charles; it was kind of like giving three different sermons back to back. A bit tiring, but it went well. I don't know how professors teach three- or four-hour block classes! Then next week I'll be leading some workshops at the Willow Creek Group Life Conference. The week after that I'm headed to Minnesota to speak at Homecoming at my undergrad alma mater, Crossroads College. Whew! Plus I'm also scheduled to lead a morning devotion during a planning retreat next week.

They say that whenever you speak, you actually give three talks. There's the talk that you plan to give, the talk you actually give, and the talk you wish you had given. This was certainly the case at Bethlehem Lutheran. I came in with way more material than there was time for (always better to overprepare than underprepare, I think). So during small group processing times in the midst of the presentation, I was scribbling around my manuscript, slashing paragraphs, deciding what to cut and skip and highlight and whatnot. I was discombobulated enough at one point that I glossed over an entire page and then tried to go back later and catch some of it. It didn't flow great, but it was okay.

I tend to be a manuscript speaker. I generally write out all my comments ahead of time, word for word. Other speakers and preachers are able to speak from outlines or brief notes ("tell Jell-O story here"), but I can't do it. I'll adjust things on the fly as I speak, so I'm not entirely tied to the text, but unless I'm very familiar with the material, I can't speak without notes. The manuscript pages are my security blanket. That way, if I have a brain freeze and blank out, I can at least look down on the page and read something.

Writing and speaking are very different mediums, rhetorically. It doesn't work for me to cut and paste from my book chapters and try to turn them into talks. It tends to sound too abstract that way. I find it works better to look over my published material but then to open a new Word document and write a fresh talk around the content. Otherwise I'll use vocabulary and language that just don't sound right conversationally.

Blogging is a little different. My "blogging voice" tends to sound more like my conversational speaking voice, so I can occasionally cut and paste from a blog post and insert that material into a talk. But I can't cut and paste from a talk or a blog entry and try to put it into a book chapter. Writing for publication, for me at least, requires a different mindset and approach, and I'm a lot more careful about word choice and sentence structure and all that.

These days, authors are increasingly required to be public speakers. The more visible an author is, out speaking and whatnot, the more likely people will find the books. But many authors are not great public speakers, and many public speakers are not great writers. Though there's overlap, these worlds are very different. Compare this with music or theatre. For musicians and actors, public performance is a necessary component of their art. They give concerts, they have onstage personas. But writers, often introverts by nature, usually ply their craft in solitude (or at Starbucks), and what emerges from that creative context doesn't necessarily translate well to the conference platform.

At one point I was planning on pastoral ministry, so I've had my share of homiletics courses and sermon prep. I'm an extrovert, so I enjoy going out and speaking and interacting with people. And I learn a lot from these experiences; all of it helps refine my material and shape my thinking. But sometimes part of me wishes I could just mail my book out instead of talking. After all, in terms of sheer content delivery, talks are rather inefficient. I can only say so much in a half hour talk, and books can give a lot more analysis and depth. When I'm talking, I'll think to myself, here's the overview and the summary bullet points, but if you want the real scoop on all this, read chapter 3!

But I know that pedagogically, public speaking can do things that mere reading can't. I think in some ways it might be harder to construct a good class or workshop than to write an essay or article. When writing, I'm mostly just thinking about content and style. But a workshop or talk requires thinking through how people will be experiencing the material in real time. Is this too much? Too theoretical? Do I need an illustration here? Group discussion? An interactive activity? Sadly, it's easier to just deliver a lecture and be done with it than to really work through what would be good pedagogy. As one of my mentors mentioned to me, professors usually focus on their teaching and don't think enough about the students' actual learning. Because it's harder - there are a just a lot more variables and factors beyond the teacher's control.

So kudos to all teachers, professors, pastors and preachers out there - I recognize how difficult it is to do what you do! Thanks for your faithfulness in preparation and teaching day in and day out, preaching Sunday after Sunday, year after year. Those of us in the publishing world have a lot to learn from you.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Last night I finished reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, the author of The Kite Runner. It's a worthy follow-up, and I think it might have been even more haunting and captivating than his first novel. The book follows the intersecting lives of several women in Afghanistan throughout three decades of recent history. The narrative portrays the impact and brutality of war on local families and communities, and highlights the fact that inhumanity and cruelty often come not from outside enemies but from those closest to you. It's a tragic, heartbreaking story, and yet one laced with hope and redemption.

I won't give away too much of the plot, since it really must be experienced for yourself, but I will say that one discomfiting dimension of the book was that the novel describes events in contemporary history that I've lived through but have been largely ignorant of. As a kid, I vaguely remember hearing something about Soviet troops in Afghanistan but of course had no idea what any of that was about. Like most of us in the West, I only heard of the Taliban after 9/11. Hosseini's novel gives us a startling portrait of the on-the-ground lived realities of life in Afghanistan, particularly the plight of women.

It was disturbing to realize that some of the events described in the book (and lived out by countless Afghan citizens) took place as I was going to college and grad school, getting married and setting up my happy little suburban life - completely unaware of how people around the world were suffering. Several of the characters in the book are roughly the same age as me and my wife, according to the novel's timeline, and it strikes me that they and so many real-life people like them have endured far more trauma and faced more painful choices in their young lives than most of us in the West have encountered. This is the power of good literature, to help us understand and experience what we normally cannot even imagine.

Particularly interesting is the role of religion throughout the book, for good and for bad. I don't know if the author intended the book to be an "Islamic novel" the way we think of our contemporary "Christian novels," but the portrait of Islam in the book is quite realistic, demonstrating both its capacity for fundamentalism and oppression as well as its potential for transcendance and hope. Christian readers of this novel will find that certain plot points have deeply Christian implications and resonances. One particular instance of sacrificial love struck me as profoundly Christ-like, and I wonder if it could serve as an illustrative bridge to the gospel for Muslim or secular readers.

At any rate, this is a significant novel and a fine example of contemporary literary fiction that transcends time and culture. Out of its particulars, it speaks to universals of the human spirit, perseverance and love. It will break your heart, but I also hope that it will enlarge your heart and encourage you to pray for our troubled world.

Pitfalls of romanticizing worship

[It's been a busy week, and I haven't had much time for original blogging. So what follows below are some of my thoughts from an e-mail discussion a few months ago regarding the topic of worship and love and to what extent worship songs and services should image a love relationship between us and God.]

Let me chip in with an observation about my own ambivalence about love being the primary lens or metaphor for worship - not because it's unbiblical, but because most of us late-modern/postmodern North Americans view that love primarily through the notion of romantic love, not a more holistic, agapic, communal, cosmic, sacrificial love. It's usually filtered through the grid of individualistic romantic comedies and overly personalizes the worship experience into a "Jesus & me" experience, losing the corporate sense of the worshipping community. Hence the "Jesus as idealized perfect boyfriend" type worship ballads.

Yet another concern with romanticizing worship is that it's a relatively recent and particularly Western and North American construct. As I've argued in Singles at the Crossroads and was just reading in Thomas Cahill's Mysteries of the Middle Ages, the vast majority of human history did not have a romantic understanding of love - romantic love is a development of the late middle ages and then heightened by 18th-century Romanticism and then 20th-century Hollywood. So I resonate with Bob Webber's concerns [about romanticized worship songs]. Culturally, I think that when we Christianize romantic motifs in our worship, we often merely substitute one idolatry for another, rather than challenging the very validity of romantic love as a controlling narrative in our culture.

So if we are to recover a more biblical, contextually Jewish and Trinitarian Christian understanding of worship as expression of love, we need worship songs that more faithfully reflect love as it would have been understood historically by God's people. What was the Israelite understanding of love as lived and practiced in the OT and second temple Judaism? What was the Christian understanding of love as lived and practiced in the early church? It seems to me that their notion of love in worship was often wedded to care for the widow and orphan, welcoming the stranger and the alien, rescuing the abandoned, poor and marginalized. This is borne out in Isaiah and the minor prophets as well as Acts and patristic literature. In other words, love of neighbor was the primary understanding of love, not the romantic/erotic love of a lover. And if acceptable worship was understood in love terms, it was this larger corporate love of others, not an individualistic notion of romantic love.

I suppose this might be too broad a brush - Hosea of course uses the marital metaphor (with the emphasis on God's faithfulness in the face of human infidelity - how often do we have worship songs proclaim, "We have been unfaithful adulterers, O Lover of my soul"?). But of course there corporate Israel is the beloved, not isolated individuals. And bride of Christ language is also intended to be corporate.

I realize I'm addressing several topics at once - romanticism and individualism - which overlap and are often fused. And I suspect that depending on one's tradition and context, some churches tip too much toward rationalism while others veer too much toward romanticism, and likewise some emphasize individualism too much while others emphasize collectivism. So depending on your location, you'll have different dangers to beware of. I suppose much depends on local leadership being able to diagnose their own congregations' health. Mark Labberton, author of The Dangerous Act of Worship, mentioned to me that his church has pretty much replaced all "I, me, my" language with corporate "we, us, our" language in all their worship and liturgy. That's their way of resisting the radical individualism of their cultural context (Berkeley), and I suspect it also reduces overly romanticizing the worship experience.

Anyway, these discussions have been going on for centuries - if I recall correctly, John Wesley was concerned that his brother Charles was getting too romantic and sappy in his hymnody. So how can the church be contextual and countercultural in such a time as this? In an age of American Idol, should we resist solo performances? In an age of over-privatization, should we not do podcasts? I don't know. But there's obviously plenty for us here to think about for years to come.

"live sin the suburbs"

Yesterday morning I was guest teaching a Sunday school class at Immanuel Presbyterian Church, and I was amused by this typo in the bulletin:

"More than half of the population now live sin the suburbs."

Live sin the suburbs! I'm not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds dastardly.

This weekend seemed busier than usual. Saturday morning we went to the arboretum with our local Down syndrome network group. Ellen and I led worship Saturday evening, and after church we had a children's ministry kickoff time of food and games. Then Sunday morning I was with the good people at Immanuel, and in the afternoon our neighborhood association had its annual picnic with food and games. Rather exhausting and draining, all told. I was so wiped out that I kept falling asleep while reading Return of the Jedi with Josiah.

It occurred to me that this is part of the challenge of suburban life. It can be overly busy, leaving us frazzled and worn out. And we can be tempted to check out, to just say, forget it - never mind getting involved in the community or trying to connect with neighbors. It's too tiring. It's easier to forget the world and just live our own privatized lives in our isolated bubble. Even though I'm an extrovert on the Myers-Briggs, I've been feeling more introverted lately and feel like hiding from the world sometimes.

But I have to remind myself that it's good to be intentional to meet neighbors and work toward building community. A new family moved in across the street from us this past week, and I brought over a flyer inviting them to the association picnic. I was glad to see that they showed up, and their kids played with our kids. (There were three little boys at the picnic all named Alex. And Josiah's middle name is Alexander. Kind of funny. I wanted to yell, "Hey, Alex!" and see if they all turned around. But I didn't.) We re-met another family (we had met them briefly while trick-or-treating last year), and we got to know them a little, exchanged phone numbers and said we should set up a playdate sometime.

So even though it might have been easier to just stay home and nap, I'm glad we got to meet some of our neighbors. It's all part of living Christianly in the suburbs, I think.

The immerging church

In this post-denominational, post-Christendom, post-everything era, I think that there may well be a convergence between post-liberal mainliners and post-conservative evangelicals where folks continue to seek out that which was missing from their own traditions in other streams of Christianity. We see this in some of the ancient-future liturgical retrieval (as has motivated many in my own Anglican congregation), and it is also a marker of many in the emerging/Emergent church. I think it's fascinating that while evangelicalism continues to attract disaffected former Catholics and mainline Protestants, according to Diana Butler Bass in Christianity for the Rest of Us, there's also a parallel (though smaller) mainline renewal that has a lot of energy and growth coming from disaffected former evangelicals and fundamentalists.

At any rate, whatever camp folks are coming out of or into, all Christians would do well to be "immerging," as this urbana.org WhirledView blog post puts it:

Fifty-plus years in the future, perhaps people won't care so much whether the early 21st Century church was emerging, or out of what, or into what. They probably will take note of what this generation grasped and failed to grasp.

What I care about more is the immerging church -- whether or not the church of our day is incarnational. More personally, it matters whether or not I am incarnational, as I seek to follow Jesus and serve his kingdom.

Essentially this is the model and charge of Christ, to set aside any sense of merit or entitlement, to humble ourselves, to go into all the world (not persuade the world to come into ours) with good news that we've tasted, not just read about or memorized or grown up knowing about.

. . . If the church is emerging, let us continually emergeas necessary from our safe spaces and enter into the world God created, in which God wants us to be light and indispensable flavor. And let us do so in a way that includes God's whole church, the one with Christ (not the West) at the center.

From an individualistic gospel to a global one

The gospel is bigger than individual conversion and salvation. This seems to be a recurring theme for me these days. One of the books I'm editing now that will come out in spring 2008 is called True Story: A Christianity Worth Believing In, by James Choung, in which the author uses a narrative story to explore whether Christianity really makes a difference in a world of global crises and oppression. Another one of my authors just e-mailed me to ask my take on how people's questions have shifted in recent decades. I responded that generally, various sources say that the basic question of modern (esp. post-WWII evangelicalism) was "Is it true?" whereas in the postmodern context the question has shifted to "Is it real?" or "Does it work?"

But maybe we're entering into a new era where the question is not so much about the gospel's truth or efficacy for an individual, but rather framed in terms of global healing and hope. I notice that Brian McLaren's forthcoming book, Everything Must Change, has the subtitle "Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope." I haven't read it yet, but it seems like it will be spinning out implications of the kingdom of God in global crises like AIDS and environmental issues. Perhaps a major shift is taking place from the more individualistic approach to the gospel (accept Jesus because it benefits you; follow Jesus because he'll make your life better; Jesus as vehicle for self-improvement) to the more communal approach of the '90s (join this community of fellow believers; you're not alone anymore) to a now more global approach (Jesus is healing the whole world, and we can be a part of it).

Of course, back in the '60s people were wrestling with global issues and civil rights and the Vietnam War and everything too. So maybe it's too simplistic to try to boil it down to neat categories. But I think there's certainly a shift in emphasis (especially in apologetic efficacy) from "Jesus is true for me and he can be true for you" to "Jesus is real, and he matters not just for you and me, but for the poor, the environment, the oppressed, the whole hurting world."

The Suburban Christian: A Review

I just came across this nice blog review and summary of my book.
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Last winter, I was greatly anticipating the release of the Suburban Christian by Albert Hsu. Naturally, I grabbed the book at Urbana06 and finally finished reading it sometime this summer. I read one of Al’s earlier books (Singles at the Crossroads) and I liked his mix of biblical story and cultural analysis. In the Suburban Christian, he took it a step further by addressing the deep of issue of finding spiritual vitality in the land of the plenty.

First off, I have to say that the subject of the book is timely and much needed. The bizarre mix of suburban living and Christian faith tugged on my heartstrings… to the point where I felt compelled to preach on it a month ago. I have always felt uneasy in my local church as we are a mostly suburban lot commuting to an urban church. My uneasiness was based on our lack of involvement with the local community as well as the affluent economic and cultural practices demonstrated by church members in comparison to the local neighborhood. This led me to an even greater revelation that there must be something wrong with our very faith if the way we seek goods, services, and entertainment can be a cause of injustice to others. Could I be a Christian and still live amongst this cultural milieu? Or must I move to the ‘poor downtown-core’ in order to preserve my faith? Thankfully, this book was a breath of fresh air, and a sounding board for my thoughts.

After reading the first chapter of this book, I realized that Al had researched A LOT about suburban issues. He footnotes a ton and many are academic articles and books that brings credibility and nuanced social critique about suburbia. I loved it. In fact, I wish I could study more of the urban planning issues he mentioned (maybe I will go take a night course on this stuff). His cultural analysis also hit home: the need for shelter, security, and pursuit of individual homeownership led to this inevitable social phenomenon of suburbia. No one questions why we even need separate housing, it’s just assume that once you’ve graduated and married, you need a house for yourself. This particular socialization of the suburbs can also be seen by the need for a car, possessing certain material brands of clothing or gadgets/toys.

I loved how Al highlighted several issues to consider and offered alternative ways to still thrive as a Christian while living in the suburbs.

First, consider consuming in a Christian way. We can practice more simple living by not consuming as much (do we really need an iPod?). And if we do need to consume (ie. buy food), can we do so in a conscientious way – like buying locally produced foods or fair-trade coffee. Perhaps instead of consuming a cultural product like buying an mp3 and listening to the latest hit, we can instead be creators of culture and create our own music?

Second, consider moving into community. For some, this is as simple as spending less time in front of the TV and getting to know your neighbors. Perhaps this can lead to neighborhood potlucks or the sharing of resources. I personally feel the glorification of the self is perhaps the biggest suburban ideal that is so antithetical to Christ’s teachings. I would love to consider a real move into community by means of something like co-housing or living in a co-op.

Third, consider the church in the suburbs as incarnational and countercultural. The church must counter these cultural issues that have silently crept into the collective consciousness of all suburban Christians. This can be done through teaching and fellowship, but ultimately the church must live out this message by helping its members live out the life that is so much more fulfilling then a life in pursuit of a nice job, home, and hot wife/husband.

For myself personally, I have to confess that he challenged my desire/practice of consumption. I think I do pretty well in terms of consuming goods and services – I don’t shop for clothes and the newest toys/gadgets. Instead, Al shared his own desire to buy books… which is a similar passion for me! I think I have always rationalized my growing library as it being a resource (I do lend out a lot of books and I tend to go back to many of my past readings for reference). Yet, do I really need to own them myself? I think I have to take a deep look for my need to accumulate knowledge in this form and see if I change this practice. Maybe I’ll take up Al’s example one day and donate my books to the church and help catalogue/run the library there.

There is a lot more in this book and I would strongly recommend it to everyone. In fact, I may use part of it for Sunday school about social justice issues.

Pop vs. Soda (and Duck Duck . . . )

Okay, this is kind of random, but I just came across a Facebook group named "It's called pop . . . not soda!" which says, "You bake with soda, and you drink pop. Have you ever heard a can go 'soda' when you open it? Have you ever heard of a 'Sodasicle'? Yeah, me either."

That group led me to The Great Pop vs. Soda Controversy webpage, which tracks and maps responses on whether carbonated beverages should be called pop, soda, coke or something else. Data is plotted based on respondents' hometowns.

I'm fascinated by this because back in college I noticed that Minnesotans generally said "pop" while some Wisconsinites said "soda." Since I grew up in Minnesota and my girlfriend (later wife) grew up in a soda-speaking area of Wisconsin, controversy arose every time we went to the grocery store. I felt vindicated by pointing out that the aisles were usually marked as "pop," but she found some counterexamples. We occasionally saw them described as "soda pop," which seems to bridge both camps. But I would argue that the fact that it's never called "pop soda" indicates that "pop" is the noun and that "soda" is the adjective, meaning that "pop" is the primary term.

I notice that Wikipedia is noncommittal, with the main entry being "soft drink" with a parenthetical "more commonly known as soda, pop, or soda pop." Even more fascinating is the link to the article on "soft drink naming conventions," which tracks what fizzy drinks are called around the world. In Canada, "pop" is more common than "soda." The Arab world calls them mashroob ghasi, meaning literally "gas drinks." In South Africa they're "cool drinks." In many places "lemonade" refers to clear carbonated drinks like Sprite or 7UP.

Of course, while all of this is sociologically and linguistically fascinating (at least to geeks like me), it shouldn't obscure the fact that fizzy sugar water has little nutritional value and is one of the primary culprits behind childhood obesity, diabetes, tooth decay and the like. I'm glad to see that more and more school districts are banning pop machines from their schools, or are at least having incentives for alternatives (i.e., pricing water or juice more inexpensively than pop). So whatever you call it, it's best to avoid it.

At any rate, I was glad to see that "pop" seems to have triumphed over "soda." The Pop vs. Soda site concludes that people who call it "pop" are "much, much cooler."

(Don't even get me started on the game known as "Duck Duck ______." It appears that the majority of society has uncritically accepted the conventional "Duck Duck Goose." But as we Minnesotans know, the truly orthodox and educationally superior way to play it is "Duck Duck Gray Duck." As noted on Wikipedia:

Duck Duck Gray Duck is played in the north central part of the United States, specifically Southern Minnesota/Twin Cities and surrounding areas. Two versions of the regional rules exist. In the first, the 'picker' will describe the 'ducks' as different colors or adjectives — for example, 'blue duck', 'white duck', 'lazy duck'. It's more of an educational game than an alteration of the original, in that one not only recites colors, but also tries to say 'gray duck' as casually as possible, hoping to deceive the gray duck and gain time. The second version is played exactly as the original, with the picker saying 'gray duck' instead of 'goose. The adjectives add an element of psychological warfare amongst the children, because they can insult the circle, confuse the circle with 'May Duck' or 'Gray Puck'. All of these add depth and layers among the seemingly child-like game.

But to be fair, in our crosscultural Minnesotan-Wisconsinite-Illinoisan family, we play it both ways with our kids.)

Josiah goes to kindergarten

Josiah went to his first day of kindergarten today, and it sounds like he had fun. Last night we read The Night Before Kindergarten together, and I asked him how he was feeling about going to school. He said that he was fine, that he thought it would be fun. So I'm pleased to report that after class today he said that it was "great!"

In honor of our son, let me repost a recent blog entry by my wife about a recent Josiah incident:
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Yesterday I took away Josiah's toy lightsaber. He was hitting things (including me) and when he refused to stop I took it away and put it on top of a high bookshelf. A few minutes later we had the following conversation:

Josiah (looking very sad): Mommy, you made me sad. You broke my heart.

Me: I did?

Josiah (drawing a heart in the air): Yes, my heart that is shaped like this. You broke it.

Me: How did I break your heart?

Josiah: You took my lightsaber away... (dramatic eyes, quivering lip)... If you give it back, my heart will be fixed.

Ellen: You can play with it tomorrow.

Josiah (on the verge of tears): If I have to wait until tomorrow my heart will be broken forever!

At this point I had to try very hard to hide my giggles. He seems to have the guilt trip thing down. When I refused to relent he resorted to threatening me with a ghost, vampire bats and a sheep dog. A sheep dog?! Where does he come up with this stuff?

Acts 19 on economic (in)security

[This is an article I wrote for TheHighCalling.org that was posted a few months ago.]

Business as Usual?

“Whistle while you work,” the classic Disney song proclaims. But in financially uncertain times, it can be hard to whistle when our work doesn’t necessarily provide the economic returns we hope for. It can be a challenge to enjoy our daily work when market forces and competition threaten our job security or our industry’s future. What do we do when our jobs and finances are not secure?

Acts 19 serves as a case study of two contrasting attitudes toward work and pay. The setting is the city of Ephesus, which at the time was commercially and politically the most important city in the Roman province of Asia (what is now Turkey). It was a religious center for the Roman emperor cult as well as for worship of the goddess Artemis. The Ephesian temple to Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and much of the local economy depended on the worship of Artemis. In fact, the temple also functioned as a bank.

One person who worked in Ephesus was the silversmith Demetrius. He made silver shrines of Artemis and generated business for many local workers, and we can envision him as a local union leader, organizing his fellow workers and aligning with other related trades to advocate for their industry. Demetrius was loyal to his workers and his industry, and he fiercely defended the economic interests of his trade against any threat.

Along comes the apostle Paul, whose Christian ministry is a direct challenge to the Artemis cult. Imagine if an influential person came to Seattle and began preaching the evils of coffee, directly threatening Starbucks’ business. Or if religious groups decided to lobby against the use of computers, or professional sports, or fast food. Very powerful special interest lobbies would exercise their clout to combat such threats.

That’s exactly what Demetrius does. He arranges some inter-guild meetings and warns his cohorts that this Christianity is bad for business. “You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business,” he says. “And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus.” His voice rises, his fists clench. “This Paul says that gods made by human hands—that’s our hands, folks, the work of your hands and mine—are no gods at all! There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited.” Appealing to fear, protectionism, and defensiveness, Demetrius ratchets up the rhetoric until an angry mob runs riot across town.

That’s one attitude we can have when our work isn’t going so well. Stock prices are falling, sales orders are decreasing, overseas competition is increasing—we panic. We fear for our jobs, our careers, our very lives.

Contrast this with another attitude we find a few paragraphs earlier in Acts 19. We read that “a number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas” (Acts 19:19). A drachma was a silver coin worth about a day’s wages.

Think about how much money you make in a day. Now multiply that by fifty thousand. Do the math. That’s a lot of money. This is not some symbolic gesture that the former sorcerers and religious leaders made—they very directly repudiated their industry, at great financial cost. They got rid of their assets, their investments, their 401(k)s. They gave up their livelihood, their economic security. Why? Because they heard a higher calling.

On the one hand, Demetrius and his cohorts, fearing economic disaster, retrenched and responded with fear and defensiveness. On the other hand, the former scroll owners saw that the kingdom of God was blowing a new wind through their city, and they needed to give up their old ways of doing business as usual.

We have no idea what these former sorcerers did after burning their scrolls. Did they find other careers, other jobs, other callings? We simply don’t know. But we do know this—they judged that some things were more important than economic security. Their line of work had become an idol to them, but they surrendered it to the Way of Jesus.

We don’t know what winds of fortune may blow through our business. But we can have an attitude more like the sorcerers than the silversmiths. We too can have an attitude of trust, faith and confidence in God’s leading and provision for the future.

$100 project update: Final report

Last summer I participated in one of Calvin College's Seminars in Christian Scholarship about writing as Christian proclamation. We mistakenly thought that we each had $100 of funding to use however we decided. (Turns out that we had already used our allotted $100 for reimbursement of books for the seminar.) But we went ahead and decided to embark on a $100 project, in which each of us would do something creative and constructive with $100 and then write about it.

My $100 was "funded" by an interview article that I had worked on during my Calvin seminar, and I spent much of the following months wondering what to do with the money. Got some nice suggestions from commenters on this blog, with ideas for helping youth or elderly, sponsoring an essay writing contest, coffee for strangers, facilitating a community garage sale, environmental stewardship and the like. I definitely wanted to do something related to my suburban community, and I thought it would be appropriate to do something writing- or book-related, given the nature of our seminar.

I thought about ways to grow the money first. Something I do fairly routinely is sell used books on Amazon; I always get a kick out of finding a book at a thrift shop for a quarter that I can sell online for ten bucks. Last winter I was browsing a used book store and found a number of Anchor Bible Commentaries for six or seven bucks each. I sold some of them online for thirty and fifty dollars apiece. Should I calculate that into my $100 amount and declare that I had grown the money to $160 or so? But what about the inventory of books that I bought that haven't sold yet - do I need to deduct that from the balance? And shipping costs, etc.? After thinking through the accounting details, I concluded that I didn't want to mess with the potential entrepreneurial investment growth aspect of the project and would just keep it to a simple what-could-I-do-with-$100.

Something that occurred to me while reading The Kingdom Assignment is that people often used their $100 in ways consistent with their natural interests, gifts and opportunities. So I thought about the various community organizations and institutions that I interface with, and the obvious thought that came to mind was our local public library. We go to the library several times every week and always have dozens of items checked out and stacked up on our nightstands.

So I talked with folks at the library, explained the $100 project and asked if there were any ways I could use the money for some sort of special volunteer project or donation. I didn't want to just donate it to the friends of the library foundation or buy a brick on the sidewalk; I wanted to do something a little more personal and specific. I mentioned that I work at a book publisher and could purchase books to be donated. They talked it over at some meeting and got back to me, saying that they'd like the donation of books. So I gave them some current catalogs, and they looked through them and gave me a list of requested titles.

Because of my IVP employee discount, the $100 was able to purchase $250 worth of books (retail price), which in this case was 15 books, four of which I had worked on as project editor. And I was also able to donate another dozen or so overstock/slightly hurt books that were available for giveaway. The library carries numerous Christian books and even already had a few IVP titles (including my suburbs book), but I was glad to make more IVP books directly available to the collection.

So my $100 project flowed out of my work in Christian book publishing and benefited an institution in my local suburb that serves as a "third place" for the community and promotes literacy, reading and knowledge. I'm hopeful that random browsers will pick up these books on the new arrivals shelves and experience some degree of spiritual ministry through the content. I've always loved the fact that our books are like little missionaries that can go many places that we can't. I think it's theologically significant that Christians can work through existing community organizations (like public libraries) to be salt and light in our communities. We can work counterculturally through the church and other Christian organizations, but we can also work transformatively through society's own institutions.

So that's what I did with my $100. What did you do?

Time in traffic and walkable communities

I just saw a poll on Facebook about "How much time do you spend in traffic a day?" One thousand Facebook members responded. Here are the results:

- More than 2 hours: 10%
- 1 to 2 hours: 31%
- 30 minutes to an hour: 28%
- Less than 30 minutes: 23%
- None: 9%

There are breakdowns by age and gender, but not by urban/suburban, etc. The only clue the poll gives of geography is that the "audience" was Los Angeles, CA. So that may skew the results in terms of applicability nationwide, but since LA is largely a suburban megalopolis, this may be a fairly good reflection of what suburban commuting patterns are like in major metropolitan areas. This is not a scientific survey, of course, but I think the results are telling.

I also just came across Walk Score (HT: Life Is Ministry - thanks, Matthew!). Walk Score is a site that calculates how walkable your neighborhood community is, based on how pedestrian-friendly the street layout is, the proximity to parks and public space, access to community institutions, etc. Go to Walk Score, plug in your address and see how your neighborhood does.

My neighborhood ranked as 54 out of 100, which is "Some Walkable Locations: Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a bike, public transportation, or car." Oddly enough, our previous home just two blocks away gets a score of 57. The apartment one suburb over where we lived when we first got married is 55. The neighborhood where I grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis is 29. I remember walking quite a lot there, but that was primarily before I was old enough to drive. (Walk Score also lets you score some celebrity homes, like Bill Gates's house [6], the White House [91] and Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt's pre-breakup house [8]. One of the most iconic suburban homes, the Brady Bunch house, gets a very walkable 80.)

Here are Walk Score's comments about why walking matters:

Walkable neighborhoods offer surprising benefits to our health, the environment, and our communities.

Better health: A study in Washington State found that the average resident of a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood weighs 7 pounds less than someone who lives in a sprawling neighborhood¹. Residents of walkable neighborhoods drive less and suffer fewer car accidents, a leading cause of death between the ages of 15 - 45.

Reduction in greenhouse gas: Cars are a leading cause of global warming. Your feet are zero pollution transportation machines.

More transportation options: Compact neighborhoods tend to have higher population density, which leads to more public transportation options and bicycle infrastructure. Not only is taking the bus cheaper than driving, but riding a bus is ten times safer than driving a car²!

Increased social capital: Walking increases social capital by promoting face-to-face interaction with your neighbors. Studies have shown that for each 10 minutes a person spends in a daily car commute, time spent in community activities falls by 10 percent³.

Stronger local businesses: Dense, walkable neighborhoods provide local businesses with the foot traffic they need to thrive. It's easier for pedestrians to shop at many stores on one trip, since they don't need to drive between destinations.

The Way Is Made by Walking

IVP just released a new book called The Way Is Made by Walking: A Pilgrimage Along the Camino de Santiago by Arthur Paul Boers. The author traces his month-long, 500-mile-long walk on a historic pilgrimage route in northwest Spain. (Cue the retro soundtrack: "I would walk five hundred miles, and I would walk five hundred more . . .") What's most intriguing to me about the book is that it blends spiritual formation with theologically astute cultural analysis. So here are some particularly insightful observations about the physical act of walking:

I also know that my watch moves more slowly when I am on foot. Walking affects not just space and distance but also time itself. In our high-speed way of living—which we intriguingly call “driven”—we miss many things. Christian faith calls us to a different pace of life, and walking is a vital way to achieve that.

In an essay titled “Time by Design,” Linda Breen Pierce argues that driving exposes us “to both faster speeds and greater stimulation” than walking. Consequently the brain must “work harder as you focus on safety and process all that you see.” It pressures us with “a rush of sensory perceptions.” Walking then is not just physically slower but mentally as well. There is less to take in, to process, to absorb. And we are able to deal with what faces us.

Technological culture—in spite of “labor saving” rhetoric and devices—actually makes us busier. Pauses, breaks and respites have disappeared. The norm of multitasking leaves us unaware of what goes on within or around us. But walking can move us into a different mode. Einstein showed that time is relative. Moving on our own two feet has its own pace; I call it the speed of life.

In our culture it is less trouble to drive than to walk, even if that choice is wasteful and unhealthy. Strolling is actually discouraged. . . . I could name dozens of people who drive an hour or two each day to and from work and think nothing of it. It is the price they pay for a job. But I know hardly anyone who walks thirty minutes for their commute, let alone an hour or two. How strange we would regard someone who did that, even though it is far healthier physically, emotionally, spiritually and environmentally.

Walking is an act of dissent; it is countercultural.

Indeed, walking is a demonstration, a demurral. Against flagrant expenditure of nonrenewable resources. In opposition to the noise of motor vehicles. Counter to the ugliness of cities and communities shaped to accommodate cars and discourage pedestrians. In opposition to all the burying of topsoil under asphalt. Mourning for how long one has to go before feet can touch the earth. In remonstration against the danger that cars pose. And on and on.

As I made my little declaration of dissent, I realized that I was not angry. I was joyful and sad, both at once. Gladdened by the opportunity to walk, and regretting that others did not know what they were missing.

Book discussion chapter 6: Finding community

I'm a little slow in posting this update, but L. L. Barkat and Charity Singleton have again blogged their thoughts about my book, this time about chapter 6, which is about the challenges of finding community in the suburbs. Here's a brief chapter summary: The meaning of "community" has shifted over the past century from a geographic sense of place (community = neighborhood) to a more affinity-based understanding (the arts community, the Christian community, the eBay community). The architecture and structures of suburbia tend to isolate us and distance us from our neighbors. Historically, television brought us indoors and air conditioning kept us there. But we all have this inherent yearning for reconnecting with our neighbors, whether through the public "third places" or personal gatherings like Tupperware parties, which I argue were one of the key historical forces in the mid-20th century that counteracted suburban isolationism.

And the best way for suburban Christians to build community is to recover the practice of hospitality. Charity notes, "Hospitality can be as traditional as inviting neighbors over for a meal, or as radical as creating new neighbors by inviting missionaries or a struggling family to temporarily share your home. Hsu also suggests things like sharing lawn equipment or transforming personal space, like garages, into community space for neighborhood gatherings. Mostly, I've heard that hospitality is creating space in my life to share with other people. When my home, my hands, and my heart are available, I can help build community."

And particularly eloquent, I thought, were Llama Momma's comments:

. . . And the single Mom on the corner who is too busy to care much where her kids are most afternoons. Letting her know that I care about her and her daughers; giving her my phone number and letting her know that one of her girls is at my house almost every day, so if she needs her back home, to call; and welcoming "one more" at our lunch table most afternoons. Filling her up with hugs and healthy snacks and a listening ear. This is community.

Watching the children play t-ball in the front yard with all of the neighborhood kids and Moms, realizing I'm almost out of milk and my husband's out of town. Asking the neighbor Mom to keep an eye on the boys while I run to the store. This is community.

And when a neighbor's husband comes home late and drunk, and domestic violence becomes a reality inside her "safe" space, she realizes she is not alone. She has community. So at midnight, her and her babies come knocking on my safe house. This is community.

Okay. I've gone on too much. I guess I am just so passionate about this because I am experiencing it in my neighborhood and it is powerful and wonderful. I have friends I wouldn't have had if I had stayed inside, and I am better for those friendships.

Here are links to previous posts on chapter 5 on branding and identity, chapter 4 on consumerism, chapter 3 on commuter culture, chapter 2 on housing, and chapter 1 and the introduction on suburbia in general.

Nehemiah, prayer and perseverance

[Last week I was pleased to see that ChristianityToday.com reposted my last Harry Potter entry as the article "Spoiler Alert." Here's another article I wrote for TheHighCalling.org that has been reposted at Christianity Today's FaithInTheWorkplace.com site.]

Praying Through the Dark Times

Nehemiah is one of my favorite Old Testament characters. His story begins "in the month of Kislev in the 20th year" of the reign of King Artaxerxes (Neh. 1:1). That's when Nehemiah learns that Jerusalem's wall has been broken down and the gates burned. Nehemiah sits down and weeps. "For some days" (1:4) he mourns and fasts and prays before the Lord. He says that he is praying "day and night" (1:6) for the people of Israel.

How long did he pray? The next scene takes place "in the month of Nisan" (2:1), when he asks the king for permission to return to Jerusalem. The Hebrew month of Nisan is March/April by our calendar. The month of Kislev is November/December. Nehemiah has been praying four months! Day and night, for four months, Nehemiah has persevered in prayer before taking action to return to Jerusalem.

Once there, Nehemiah surveys Jerusalem and organizes the community to repair the wall. Along the way, they face opposition from outsiders as well as from within their own ranks. He battles political intrigue and handles dissension and disgruntled workers. All the while, they work "from the first light of dawn till the stars come out" (4:21). He organizes shifts so they "can serve us as guards by night and workmen by day" (4:22). They don't even change their clothes, so they will be ready to defend their work at a moment's notice.

With amazing speed, "the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days" (6:15). Elul is August/September. So Nehemiah and his team worked nonstop day and night, in hard outdoor labor, during some of the hottest months of the year. And they finished their colossal task in less than two months. No wonder their enemies from surrounding nations "were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of God" (6:16). Nehemiah spent less time doing the actual work than he spent praying for and preparing for the work. Perhaps that's why the work went so well.

Nehemiah continued on as governor of Jerusalem until the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes (13:6), meaning that he governed for twelve years, longer than many of us stay in our jobs. Nehemiah persevered in his work, in both short-term projects as well as in long-term governance.

After his twelve-year administration, he returned to Babylon, presumably to serve the king there. "Some time later" (13:7), and we don't know how long, Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem. Perhaps he is an old man now, at an age when he should be taking it easy. But he sees the people ignoring some of the reforms that he instituted. So he takes action—and not merely to preserve his own legacy. He takes action to ensure that his people persevere in the mission, identity, and calling that God has given them. He reminds the Israelites: Do not forget your commitments to God.

We remember Nehemiah today as a model of organization and visionary leadership. We sometimes forget his perseverance as he worked to realize God's will for himself and his community. He was faithful throughout his life, persevering in faith and action to the very end. May God enable us to do likewise.

Harry Potter's narrative journey (and implications for the Christian story)

It’s always interesting when a cultural artifact becomes a cultural phenomenon. There was not a lot of initial promotion for the first Harry Potter book, and expectations were modest. But somehow word of mouth buzz moved the series past a tipping point and Harry Potter became something larger. No longer was J. K. Rowling an unknown author laboring in obscurity. Now she's an international media celebrity, wealthier than the Queen of England, with millions of fans around the world clamoring for every word and detail about Harry.

This makes me wonder – what would it look like if we saw comparable levels of Harry Potter mania directed to the Christian story? It’s not like crowds are awaiting the next Bibleman DVD, or staying up all night to read Miroslav Volf’s newest book. Or Isaiah or Jeremiah, for that matter. Can you imagine people packing the streets of Ephesus in eager anticipation of the publication of part 2 of Luke/Acts? Or release parties in Corinth celebrating the receipt of Paul’s second epistle to them? Dress up like your favorite super-apostle!

I wonder if there have been times in church history when the gospel narrative was this gripping a cultural phenomenon. People probably wouldn’t be this crazy about Harry Potter if they had all grown up in a context where they had heard the Harry Potter stories so much that they no longer seemed fresh. The challenge for us in a post-Christendom era is that people have become anesthetized to the Christian story. They’ve heard it already, or they think they’ve heard it already. And it doesn’t capture their imagination the way today’s imaginative narratives have. In a world of Harry Potter, Star Wars, 24 and Heroes, it’s hard for the Christian story to compete.

Those of us who have been reading the Harry Potter novels as they were being published were able to experience something special that future generations of readers won’t – the anticipation and suspense of waiting several years between each book. From now on, new readers can read all seven books straight through if they want to. But for the past decade, Harry Potter readers have been part of a global community that has experienced the dramatic tension of waiting for the next installment.

I wonder what it would look like for the gospel story to be more suspenseful. I think one of the most significant aspects about the experience of reading the final Harry Potter book is that we didn’t want to hear spoilers. We had come to know and love the characters so much that wanted to journey with Harry and his friends. We needed to experience and discover for ourselves what they were going through. We didn’t want to find out in chapter two of book one how it was all going to turn out. Instead we read seven books and thousands of pages, staying up into the wee hours of the morning, because the journey is every bit as important as the ending. Indeed, without experiencing the adventure of the journey, there wouldn't have been as much dynamic power to the ending.

Are Christian “gospel presentations” less like the adventure of a Harry Potter novel and more like spoilers that tell you what happened but take all the suspense and delight out of the journey? Maybe Christians have been so intent on getting to the point and bottom-lining things, for the sake of saving souls, that they’ve taken the mystery and surprise out of the narrative. We jump to the end. God loves you, Jesus died for you, pray this prayer, yada yada yada.

It’s well-intentioned but self-defeating. We don’t get to know the characters, and so we diminish the experience and the power of the biblical narrative. Often we are so concerned about getting people from here to there that they don’t experience the journey enough to really make the faith their own. We have short-circuited the narrative imagination. What a loss.

Harry Potter reminds us that it's not just what we say, but how we say it. We can recover the imagination, a sense of wonder at a world of mystery and discovery. We can invite people to join us on a long-term experiential journey that’s full of twists and turns but nevertheless infused with hope. And we can enjoy the community of friends and mentors that accompany us along the way.

Harry Potter and the Cultural Imagination (No Spoilers!)

On the evening of Friday, July 20, I went to the Party That Must Not Be Named in our local suburb’s downtown area. A street had been blocked off, store names had been changed to reflect those found in Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade, and several thousand Muggles (many in wizarding garb) gathered in celebrative anticipation of the biggest book release in history. I had not seen such an enthusiastic crowd since opening day of the last Lord of the Rings movie.

I had reserved a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at a different local independent bookstore that wasn’t having a midnight release party, and because I was at a conference, I wasn’t able to pick it up until Sunday. I finished reading it late Tuesday night. Wednesday morning I gathered with several of my coworkers who had also finished the book and we debriefed and discussed for some time. One friend mentioned that she had reread all previous six books in anticipation of the final release, and that after finishing it, she would wake up in the mornings still thinking about all that had transpired.

I wasted several more hours in the following days reading online reviews and commentary about the book. I also happened to win a pack of movie tickets from dropping my business card in a jar, so Thursday night we used them to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Then this weekend I kept the kids occupied so Ellen could finish reading book 7, and we got together with friends after church to process the book and series. It’s fun to be part of a larger community of millions of readers and fans who are likewise enthralled with these stories.

The New York Times review said that "J.K. Rowling has created a world as fully detailed as L. Frank Baum’s Oz or J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, a world so minutely imagined in terms of its history and rituals and rules that it qualifies as an alternate universe – which may be one of the reasons the Potter books have spawned such a passionate following."

I think it’s significant that one aspect of the Potterverse is fan fiction where readers write their own alternate stories beyond the published canon and further explore what might be going on with their favorite characters. This seems to be the case of any well-developed imaginative universe, like Star Trek or Buffy. There’s so much more to explore. And the result is that consumers can become creators. We don’t just read the books or watch the movies and TV shows; we can enter into the stories and become participants in the act of cultural creation. It’s been a long-standing tradition in the comic book world that the best comic book writers and artists started out as comic book readers and fans.

All this reminds us that Christians shouldn’t be just consuming cultural narratives. We should be creating them. I recently read Tolkien’s The Children of Hurin, which reminded me again of Tolkien’s genius in creating an entire world of epic narrative, history and “true myth.” Ditto with C. S. Lewis’s Christian imagination applied to fantasy, science fiction and other writings. Ellen just read The Restorer, a Christian fantasy novel of a soccer mom pulled into a Lord-of-the-Rings-type world, where "keepers of the verses" are musicians who preserve their scriptures in song. Kudos to the author, Sharon Hinck, for creating such a universe.

We need more Christians engaged in culture-making enterprises, writing stories and weaving narratives that show (and not just tell) Christianity’s themes of redemption, incarnation and new creation. Several of our friends said that they wish they could have written the Harry Potter books. Well, why not? Perhaps someday some Harry Potter fan, inspired by Rowling’s example and also compelled by the Christian story, will weave a tale that will become an even greater cultural phenomenon than Harry Potter.

The cost of bottled water

I blogged earlier about avoiding bottled water for stewardship and ethical reasons. The latest issue of Fast Company has a gripping article about the bottled water industry, "Message in a Bottle," by Charles Fishman (author of the excellent book The Wal-Mart Effect). A blog post from urbana.org summarizes the main points:

• Last year, Americans spent $15 billion on bottled water -- more than we spent on movie tickets. This year that is expected to be $16 billion.
• Water is basically free, and for now more or less abundant in most of the U.S.
• Buying bottled water is essentially buying convenience (and bending to marketing messages).
• 24% of the bottled water Americans buy is repackaged tap water created by Coke and Pepsi.
• Americans drink more bottled water than milk, or coffee, or beer.
• Americans went through about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year, 167 for each person.
• Americans throw 38 billion water bottles a year into landfills. (Over $1 billion worth of plastic which could have been recycled -- only 1/4 of all the bottles are recycled by consumers).
• It's easier for most Americans to get as much drinking water from Fiji as they want, than it is for over half the people of Fiji, where the water is bottled yet safe drinking water for the local population is scarce.
• If the water we use at home were to cost what even the cheapest bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000. (Point is: we pay a lot for what is available for almost nothing.)
• Most of the world's bottled water is dominated by four companies: Pepsi, Coke, Danone, and Nestle.
• Within a decade, American consumption of bottled water is expected to surpass soda. Maybe that's a good thing. Is that a good thing?
• One out of six people in the world does not have a safe, dependable source of drinking water. That's a billion people.
• Each day, 3,000 children die from diseases caught from tainted water.

This paragraph jumped out at me: "We buy bottled water because we think it's healthy. Which it is, of course: Every 12-year-old who buys a bottle of water from a vending machine instead of a 16-ounce Coke is inarguably making a healthier choice. But bottled water isn't healthier, or safer, than tap water. Indeed, while the United States is the single biggest consumer in the world's $50 billion bottled-water market, it is the only one of the top four--the others are Brazil, China, and Mexico--that has universally reliable tap water. Tap water in this country, with rare exceptions, is impressively safe."

And this line: "If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35."

When I finished reading the article, my immediate response was to fill up a pitcher with tap water and put it in the fridge. And I had a nice glass of cold water with my lunch.

The Sound of Suburbia: The suburbs are noisy!

This from the New York Times. Acoustical engineers have found that suburbia is nearly as noisy as urban centers:

Their findings, delivered on June 8 in Salt Lake City at the 153rd biannual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, indicate that the noise level in the average suburb is approaching the noise level in the average city.

“The level of noise in the urban and rural areas we tested remained pretty consistent with the 1970 E.P.A. figures” — about 59 decibels in the city and 43 in the country, Mr. Szymanski said.

But in the suburbs, the average ambient noise level was 56 decibels — a whisper less than the average noise level in the average city, and 7 decibels higher than it was in 1970.

According to a Census Bureau survey, noise is the #1 "neighborhood complaint," ahead of crime, odors and poor public services. Increased noise is a marker of increased housing and population density in suburban areas, with more cars, more roads, etc. As a result, suburban communities are enforcing noise ordinances, restricting noisy appliances like leaf blowers (95 to 105 decibels) and weed whackers (94 to 96 decibels). Ice cream trucks have been ticketed for playing annoying jingles, and mosques have been sued for calls to prayer.

Justice in the Burbs review

The new book Justice in the Burbs: Being the Hands of Jesus Wherever You Live by Will and Lisa Samson has just been released. I met Will a few years ago and just saw him a couple times in the past two weeks. Will is a doctoral student in sociology, and Lisa is an award-winning novelist in the Christian market. They both bring their skills and expertise to their joint book, half of which is an engaging fictional narrative about a suburban couple exploring justice issues, and the other alternating half is nonfiction exposition and commentary about the topics at hand. Here's a key paragraph:

. . . doing missions means doing the work of the kingdom wherever you are sent. And the best place to think about where you have been sent is to see where you are. God is a being of great economy. He works before you even realize it and before you sign on, and he's placed you where you are today for a reason. If you find yourself in the suburbs, welcome to your mission field.

The book, especially the later chapters, have lots of practical ideas for missional suburban living, in terms of better use of resources, decisions in eating and transportation, connecting with latchkey kids, practicing simplicity, purchasing fair trade, etc. They provide a realistic portrait of challenges and obstacles to suburban justice, and they point out that there is no "silver bullet" or "quick fix." Rather, justice requires commitment for the long haul and long-term investment in our neighborhoods and communities. This is itself countercultural considering how transient suburban culture is.

This book deserves a wide reading. The title is somewhat of a misnomer - the Samsons aren't just talking about suburban justice; they're really discussing the totality of holistic suburban life and discipleship. There's a danger that the book will read mostly by a self-selecting audience of those who are already concerned about justice issues. Really it's for any suburbanite who has a sense that the suburban life is not as it should be and that something must be done about it.

One minor quibble or critique is that despite the title, the majority of the narrative seems to focus on justice in urban contexts or rural settings, whether urban ministries or mountaintop mining issues. Comparatively less space is given to discussing justice in actual suburban areas. Much of the book seems to assume that most suburban Christians are fairly affluent and need to be investing themselves in justice issues elsewhere. While this may be true, I would have liked to have seen more material and analysis about the increasing issues of suburban poverty. I read an article recently about how food shelves in suburban areas have seen increased demand of 300% in recent years (while food pantries in urban contexts have had roughly the same amount of demand and need).

David Fitch argues that "new forms of poverty are taking over the suburbs as thousands have been talked into sub-prime mortgages and various other enslavements which leave them with little or no money for other necessities despite having a suburban home to live in." Julie Clawson made these perceptive comments on David's blog:

Out here in the far west Chicago suburbs I see this all the time. Kendall County is the third fastest growing county in the nation. We have tons of those cheaply built cookie-cutter homes that create the "house poor" culture out here. We are too rich as a county to get any government aid, so social services are nonexistent.

I see this with the moms in playgroup all the time. They got the house but they have no connection to anything. No phone, no TV, no internet. Their husbands won't give them money for gas so they are stuck in their big homes with no connection to anyone. More and more these moms are "homeschooling" (no real education, just basically having the kids at home) so they they don't have to pay all the fees of public school (which are quite hefty out here). If our playgroup happens to meet on their block they show up and stay hours longer because they are desperate for some contact with people.

Every other house in some of these 2-3 year old neighborhoods has a "for sale" (read foreclosure) sign on it. I've heard countless stories of the men just disappearing to escape it all and leaving the mom who has been out of the workforce for a number of years stranded with a few kids, a big house, and a lot of debt.

These are real issues of suburban injustice - predatory lending, lack of social services, as well as denial on the part of local municipalities regarding suburban poverty and homelessness. I hope that readers of Justice in the Burbs will be motivated and mobilized to pursue justice at home in their suburban neighborhoods as well as wherever God may lead them - urban, rural, global, wherever!

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy

The book The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy came out a few years ago but I just now have gotten around to reading it. If you liked books like Fast Food Nation or Nickel and Dimed, you'll appreciate the narrative approach in this book. Author Pietra Rivoli takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the life cycle of a T-shirt, from cotton farms in Texas to factories in China as well as lobbyists and interest groups arguing in the halls of Congress and how shirts are reused after being donated to Salvation Army bins. It's a fascinating read, and it heightens the complexity of economics and consumer choices in a globalized world.

The author gives an unvarnished portrait of worker conditions in factory sweatshops, but also provides historical perspective and shows how things are actually much better today than they have been in many comparable eras of history. She also argues that the main problems in international trade are not with the markets, but with the politics that govern them.

Lots of fascinating tidbits. From the cotton farming side: It takes about a third of a pound of cotton to make a T-shirt, about fifteen cents' worth. Did you know that cottonseed oil is used in peanut butter, spaghetti sauce, Girl Scout cookies and almost any kind of crispy snack food, like chips? It's also used in soaps and detergents. The meal from cottonseeds is used to feed horses, hogs, chickens, sheep and catfish. And leftover cotton fuzz is sold to be used in throw pillows, candlewicks, twine, medical supplies and tree-free toilet paper. Nothing goes to waste.

At the Chinese factories: Yes, it's low pay, long hours, poor working conditions, cramped living quarters, etc. But it's steady pay and far better than rural life on the farm, which is usually more backbreaking and has little financial return or security. Rivoli notes that generations of activists have "changed the rules of the race and raised the bottom, making it a much better place than it used to be." Young women now have more financial options and are less likely to be trapped in poverty or prostitution.

When Americans clean out their closets and donate old clothes to charity (to make room for an endless stream of new clothes), most of the clothes are bundled off and sold to exporters, who cull through them for items that can be sold to particular markets. A vintage Rolling Stones T-shirt can go for $300 in the collector's market. Mickey Mouse T-shirts and Levis jeans are sold to Japanese markets. The clothes are further divided. Some can be resold in bulk, usually to Africa, in huge bales containing several thousand articles of clothing. These eventually find their way to local entrepreneurs in village marketplaces, where a newish Gap shirt might go for $3.00, but shirts from family reunions and fun runs go two for a penny. Other shirts are cut and made into rags, or shredded into "shoddy," which can become raw material for carpet pads, mattresses, insulation and low-grade yarn that can be remade into cheap clothing. Again, nothing is wasted.

The sheer size of the textile industry is staggering, especially the amount of clothing that is purchased and discarded every year. Rivoli notes that American women buy far more new clothes than men and also throw away more clothes as well - bales arriving from the Salvation Army contain two or three times as much women's clothing as men's. Men not only buy less clothing but wear it longer, so the men's clothes that are donated are usually in more ragtag shape than women's clothing. So Western purchases provide the overseas resale market with about seven times more women's clothing in good condition than men's.

Reading this book made me think through my own closets. I rarely buy new clothes, and I tend to only buy to replace something that has worn out. I rotate through maybe five or six dress shirts and three main pairs of Dockers or slacks, and I own three pairs of shoes - brown shoes for the office, black shoes for special occasions and white Reeboks for everything else. In terms of T-shirts, I only buy shirts to commemorate particular events (Urbana or the 2008 Beijing Olympics, for example), and I often find myself getting new shirts for free from trade shows or whatever. I'm pretty ambivalent about my clothing, mostly because these days I don't care a whole lot about fashion or what I look like, as long as things are clean and functional. Even though my default setting is to purchase as little as possible, it's worth remembering that every purchase does at least benefit some worker in some factory (and various middlemen along the way), and discarded, donated clothing also benefits not only some local charity but probably some entrepreneurial merchant in some village overseas. Such is the interconnected nature of global commerce, for good and for bad.

The Small-Mart Revolution

This weekend I finished reading The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition by Michael Shuman. The book documents how it is far healthier for local communities and economies when people buy and shop at locally owned businesses. Dollars that are spent at independent mom-and-pop stores tend to be recycled throughout the community with other local vendors, while dollars spent at big box and chain stores tend to be siphoned away to corporate headquarters and national or multinational vendors.

What's interesting is that I was reading this book while in a small town in Wisconsin for a family reunion on my wife's side of the family. Just before the reunion I took our younger son to a local haircut place for a haircut, and while we were out we browsed several local independent bookstores and bought a few items there. I also got a carwash at a fundraiser in a local church's parking lot. The Small-Mart book was on my mind, so I was feeling virtuous about supporting this small town's local economy with my out-of-town dollars.

But then I noticed that I was more intentional about buying locally as an out-of-town visitor than I am at home, where it's all too easy to buy at chains for convenience reasons. Or at least in some ways rather than others. I never shop at Wal-Mart and pretty much always shop at Target. But Shuman isn't impressed with Target either (though it's better). It's just hard to consciously go to independents for everyday supplies.

But we can all pick certain areas that we'll be intentional in. While at ICRS last week, my friend Jana happened to ask me where I'm purchasing my copy of the last Harry Potter book, and I told her I was going to buy it from a local independent bookstore that carries both used and new books. The thrifty shopper in me is tempted by Target, which is selling Harry Potter for almost half off the cover price, but I happen to have some used book trade-in credit at the independent bookstore that can be applied to a new book. So I get the best of both worlds - supporting a local retailer and getting a bargain. (But I'm not sure if I'll be able to go to any midnight Harry Potter parties since the Midwest Emergent Gathering is taking place this same weekend.)

Recycling bins and volunteering

Trade shows and conventions are notorious for being expensive and wasteful. A bottle of water costs $4.00, and there aren't usually any recycling bins around, so all the plastic just ends up in the garbage. But here at ICRS this week, Ampelon Publishing has placed recycling bins around the convention center so that recyclables can be collected. Ampelon is the publisher of Tri Robinson's book Saving God's Green Earth: Rediscovering the Church's Responsibility to Environmental Stewardship. Ampelon's recycling bins are a refreshing contrast to all the various promotional giveaways on the sales floor. I was very encouraged to see a publisher live out their book's message in such a practical way. Support them and buy their book!

And a random item from USA Today:

If you live in Minneapolis, Salt Lake City or Austin, you're more likely to volunteer in your community than if you live in other metro areas, says a report out today by the Corporation for National and Community Service. It's not that people in those cities are necessarily kinder or gentler. They just have the right circumstances for volunteering: They feel connected to their communities, have more education, own their own homes, spend less time commuting and have more opportunities to give back, the report says.

Residents of cities where people spend a lot of time commuting or live in apartments, by contrast, tend to feel less connected to their communities, so they don't volunteer as much. Cities that ranked lowest are New York, Miami and Las Vegas. Residents of rural areas volunteer more than urban areas, the report says.

This correlates well with what Robert Putnam reported, that the more commuting you do, the less time you have for civic involvement or community service. To the extent that suburbia tends to be a commuter culture, suburban Christians should be aware of how commuting tends to diminish volunteering. (I was glad to see that my hometown of Minneapolis-St. Paul ranked #1 in the study, with 40.5% of residents doing volunteer work. Chicago ranks #32, with 27.4%. Last on the list at #50 is Las Vegas with 14.4%. See the article for the full list.)