Category: Church

Big Tent Christianity – A Place Without Fear

Posted on

In about a month (Sept. 8-9), a national conference will take place in Raleigh, North Carolina, called Big Tent Christianity: Being and Becoming The Church. In the spirit of setting up revival tents to see where the Spirit is moving, this conference is gathering voices together to explore what it means to be the body of Christ – all of us under one big tent. And yes, I’ll be perfectly honest, there are a lot of Christian voices not represented (or woefully underrepresented) at this conference. I hope that at the conference the fact that not everyone is included under the big tent is humbly acknowledged. But the conversation is important nonetheless and holds the potential for helping the church as a whole embrace our diversity and differences.

This post is part of a Synchroblog meant to jumpstart the conversation regarding what this “big tent Christianity” looks like. Participants in this synchroblog were asked to reflect on – “what does “big tent Christianity” mean to you? What does it look like in your context? What are your hopes and dreams for the Church?” There are dozens of different ways I can think of to respond to those questions, but what really resonates the most with me is the idea that big tent Christianity holds no place for fear.

In Psalm 23, when David speaks of how God guides, protects, and comforts him, he mentions that God prepares a table for him in the presence of his enemies. This isn’t some twisted comfort through schadenfraude or mockery of others – this is being able to sit at a table with one’s enemies and share a meal in peace. This is an image of what it will be like in the New Heaven and the New Earth when the entire body of Christ sits down at the banquet table of the lamb. Unitarians and Baptists. Catholics and Fundamentalists. Emergents and Neo-reformed. We will all eventually sit next to each other in peace.

I don’t say that to imply that our differences are insignificant or our theologies unimportant, but to affirm that we have no reason to fear the presence of the other. We can exist under this tent together.

But all too often we avoid even listening to the voices of others for fear that they might corrupt us, or (worse) confuse us. We want to hold on so tightly to our little piece of the truth that we demonize everyone else and inoculate ourselves against their influence. So there are college students who are told (usually by their youth pastors) to stay far away from Bible and religion classes in college for fear that all that historical criticism will affect their faith. They fear any knowledge that might force them to change. Or there are the pastors who get fired from their church for having a book by an emergenty author on their shelves. Fear of new ideas creeping in shuts down the pursuit of knowledge or the ability to question. At our old church, we were taken to task for exposing the youth there to different Christian traditions because it might cause them to choose to be something other than Baptist. There was fear of anything but the known. And many fear listening to the voices of postcolonial, or liberation, or feminist theologians for fear these voices of the margins might challenge the way things have always been (as defined by one’s particular western tradition).

Instead of learning from each other and admitting that we all follow our own particular and highly imperfect cobbled-together streams of Christian tradition, we demonize each other out of fear. We make up words like heresy or syncretism to avoid having to actually listen to those around us. We have lost the ability to value what we value and yet still sit and break bread with those with whom we disagree. This Christianity looks like a bunch of small tents scattered across a plain, each trying to keep its distance from the other and to defend its territory at all costs.

So that’s why I love the idea of a big tent Christianity. It represents the place where we can come as we are (with beliefs fully intact yet held humbly) into a place where fear is banished and we can sit in peace with even our so-called enemies at the table of the Lord. It’s where we can be the body of Christ.

Read more

Has Hate Corrupted the Church?

Posted on

As a writer with a public blog I’ve become used to getting hate emails. Sure, some people might leave offensive comments on a blog, but the real vitriol gets reserved for emails. From the sick and twisted ones detailing what sexual violence I need done to me to cure me of my feminism to the reminders that I will one day burn in hell because of my association with the emerging church, I’ve become used to the church’s odd way of demonstrating “love” to one’s neighbor. But when I look at the two posts that have far and away garnered me the most hate mail, I find it difficult to not be disturbed and heartbroken for the church.

Last summer my inbox filled up with angry responses to my post recounting the often ignored history of the slaughter of the Native American’s at the Taos Pueblo (men, women, and children took sanctuary in the church and the US Army burned them alive inside). I was called every name in the book for daring to question the greatness of the US and our right to Manifest Destiny. Then recently, my post supporting the Cordoba House (the mosque going in near Ground Zero) was linked to at the Cordoba House site to demonstrate that some Christians do support the project. That of course brought on a new wave of hate in my inbox. From those accusing me of supporting the pedophile religion of Satan to those telling me I was mocking the power of Jesus by tolerating Muslims, I witnessed the overwhelming animosity Christians hold towards the other. The words of Jesus to love our neighbor apparently don’t apply if that neighbor looks or believes differently than we do.

Out of everything I have written, that these two posts should elicit such visceral responses demonstrates how deep the issues of racism and prejudice still are in the church today. Oh, churches might give lip service to accepting others and being “colorblind,” but in reality those fears and prejudices run deep. The general message of the white American church is eerily similar to a white person saying “I’m fine with black people; I just don’t want them living next door.” So we are fine with collecting dream catchers and turquoise jewelry and seeing sexy Native American teens running around shirtless as they turn into wolves, but not with listening to their side of the historical story or admitting to our country’s acts of terrorism against their nations. And some even say they are fine with Muslims as long as they don’t put a mosque where we can see it or ask us to engage in reconciliation projects. Stereotypes and prejudices are preferred to the truth and anger erupts if such positions are questioned or challenged.

Granted, many Christians aren’t even okay with the lip-service tolerance or the “equal as long as they are separate” mentality. Recently Pastors Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL declared September 11, 2010 to be International Burn a Koran Day. In a YouTube video (warning – video contains footage of a burning Koran) he tells viewers “if you call yourself Christian you should be burning the Koran because it is of the devil.” Their blog even lists the top ten reasons to burn a Koran as if it is some sort of late night comedy routine (interestingly enough, I’ve heard most of the arguments they list used against the Bible as well). Similarly, in a recent trip back to Taos, NM I heard some white Christians discussing how the genocide of the Native American nations was a blessed gift from God to eliminate the satanic influence of their cultures from our “one nation under God.” There are some things that are just so extreme and so absurd that it is hard to believe people are even saying them much less saying them in the name of Christ, but for many Christians this sort of hatred is at the core of their faith practice. Vengeance and revenge against the other has superseded the commands to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us.

The question that plagues me is if the church will ever repent of its allegiance to hate and start following in the way of Chris instead? It seems like the church has embraced a culture of hatred. I used to have a bumper sticker on my car that said “I’m for the Separation of Church and Hate,” but someone found its anti-hate message so offensive that they vandalized it with a marker. On top of that, much of the church has lent its ear to the false prophets who mock the words of Jesus and who command their followers to run from the churches that encourage us to love our neighbor or to set the oppressed free. When the truth of God has been replaced by these racist and hate-filled lies of our culture, it is hard at times to have hope for the church. When yet another hate email arrives in my inbox questioning my faith because I spoke out against acts of violence and terrorism against non-white American peoples, I have to wonder where Jesus is in the church these days. But even amidst all that darkness there are glimmers of hope. I see the Christians (the National Association of Evangelicals even) asking that the International Koran Burning Day be canceled in the name of Jesus. I see the handful of Christians willing to stand with Muslims as they build the Cordoba House. These are public voices presenting to the world the side of Christianity that isn’t defined by violence and hatred. They may be few, but it is enough to keep believing that the core of Christianity hasn’t been completely corrupted or destroyed.

Read more

Americans with Disabilities and the Church

Posted on

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act, signed into law by President George H.W. Bush on July 26, 1990. It seems a bit strange when you think about. It has only been for the past twenty years that people with disabilities have been guaranteed fundamental civil rights in our country. Granted, it has only been within the past century that women and other minorities have been assured of those rights as well. And of course we all know how often those rights are denied or ignored, and that there are groups in America who have yet to be legally given such basic rights at all. But seriously, twenty years ago many disabled people could not physically enter most buildings, ride public transportation, attend mainstream schools, or not be denied a job simply because they used a wheelchair. There were no signs saying “Able People Only,” but the entire world was set-up to keep the disabled on the outside.

Sad thing, even as a disabled person the only reaction I ever heard about ADA was negative. People complained about the hassle of making space for the disabled. They said it was unfair that the disabled were being given special privileges (yes, seriously people were stupid enough to say something like that). And, most of all, they complained about the cost. And being in the church world, where I heard that complaint most often was from churches. Now I understand that churches often don’t have a lot of money, and to add another few hundred thousand onto a renovation budget to be ADA compliant is difficult. A church I was at once attempted to renovate their sanctuary to fit in more seating, but in the end we lost seats because of the ramp we had to put in to make the stage accessible. It was hard and forced the church to rethink where the money was to be spent, which of course led to some choice words being said about the “liberal nonsense of the ADA.” But in truth, I had to wonder why the church wasn’t the one out there doing whatever they could to include the disabled – even without being forced to by law. Jesus went out of his way to be with the disabled in his society, the church could at least do the same.

Where this gets confusing for me is the intersection of disabled people and worship. Straight-up, there is a lot that churches do in worship (especially in more experimental experiential worship) that is just plain inaccessible to the disabled. There have been a number of times at my current church where I have just sat quietly in my seat because whatever worship activity we were doing would have been impossible to do with one hand. And I always cringe a bit when we do active things, or create art, or meditate on a film and exclude the wheelchair users and the blind in our congregation. I similarly don’t wish to exclude the say, kinesthetic or visual learners in the church, but it sometimes feels as if there is no awareness of how a disabled person could enter into the worship experience. As a church have we forgotten how to go to the lengths of cutting open a roof and lowering our disabled friend in through the ceiling just so they could meet Jesus?

So as we celebrate these twenty years, I think it should be as a reminder of how far we still have to go in our culture and in the church. There are still churches that ban the disabled from serving as priests. And there are churches that see disability as a result of sin or of a lack of faith in the Lord to heal. I’ve been told to just have enough faith and the Lord will grow my arm, or to at least look forward to having two perfect arms in heaven. Disabled people need to be included in worship, but first, we need to be accepted as who we are. Not as people to be pitied or to be cured, but as children of God created the way God wanted us to be. We want to be included in community not because a law forces us to be put up with, but because the church desperately wants to love us and desires to hear our voice.

Read more

Fun in Church

Posted on

Can we have fun in church?  Like, really have a good time and take pleasure in God’s world in church?  I’m not asking if it is possible, or if that is the purpose of church, but if we are even capable of allowing ourselves to have fun in church.

A couple of weeks ago in church the topic was having faith like a child.  The teaching time ended with our pastor throwing bouncy balls around the room instigating an all-church ball fight followed by finger-painting and blowing bubbles.  Yes, my church is a tad quirky.  But what I took away from that morning was not so much the childlikeness of these acts, but how odd it was for people to allow themselves to have fun in church.  We were tearing down our barriers, abandoning church propriety, and simply allowing ourselves to be in the moment enjoying life.  It felt good.

Now I am one of the first to argue that the point of church shouldn’t be to attract and entertain the masses.  Coming to church to hear what we want to hear and sing our favorite songs has very little to do with following Jesus.  But neither does checking our personalities at the door and assuming a generic “churchgoer” persona every time we gather at church.  For some churches that involves pretending that monotone recitation and droning songs are actually soul-inspiring and their preferred way to express their spirituality.  For others it’s dressing up in the church costume (never been in fashion anywhere anytime dowdy skirts, ugly floral shirts, dark hose, and unstylish yet still uncomfortable shoes), clutching that oversized study-Bible, taking sermon notes you will never read again, and mindlessly singing lyrics you don’t really believe while hoping no one finds out that you really enjoy Lady Gaga and had a couple of beers with friends the night before.  For most churches personality and pleasure are so denigrated that the idea of allowing oneself to have fun in church (or even admit that you have fun outside of church) is beyond comprehension.

But if we can’t enjoy God’s diverse creation and express our true selves when we gather as the body of Christ, where can we?  I know life shouldn’t be dichotomized into sacred and secular, but it seems like we’ve divided it in truth into church and then all the places we really experience God.  Why is spiritual joy constrained to uncomfortable pews when just about every person in those pews would admit that they experience far more joy at a day at the lake with friends or playing a game of catch with their kids?  Why do we have to turn to TV and dinner clubs to connect with others who can express with us the intense pleasures to be found in good food?  For that matter, why are our blog conversations about theology far more meaningful that what we get at church?  Sure, I get that all of life can be called “church,” but so why is real life kept away from the place where we gather as the church?  God created us to experience pleasure, to take joy in the wonders of creation and the church has decided to blatantly ignore that part of ourselves within its walls.

I know it goes against our cultural conditioning to allow ourselves to be who God created us to be as we gather as a church, but I wish having fun in church wasn’t so taboo.  Throwing bouncy balls around in church felt weird because it was weird.  We let down our guard and enjoyed the moment.  We let the lines between the church façade and the enjoyment of life blur for a moment and something magical happened.  I’m not saying here that we should get rid of structured church, or teaching, or songs and liturgy, just allow God to be bigger than all those things.  God gave us so much in this world to take pleasure and find joy in, why do we pretend to ignore that in church as if we are ashamed of God’s gifts?  Let’s have fun in church, or at least stop hiding and start embracing and celebrating the holiness of how created us to experience and enjoy pleasure.  We all already admit such things are from God, why do we act otherwise when we gather as the body of Christ?

Read more

Children, Church, and God

Posted on

One of the joys of vacation Bible school (VBS) is watching what the kids take away from the week. Having such an intense daily experience where the kids get to “do church” and learn about God outside of the ways they normally do truly does affect their lives. My kids, for instance, have been singing the songs from the week around the clock. I hear my daughter singing to herself as she lies in her bed at night, and even my barely verbal toddler has got the “na na na” chorus down. These songs, these ideas, these themes are part of their life now even if they don’t fully grasp their meaning.

As an adult who knows that she will never fully understand her own faith or the ways God works in the world, I get that the kids will only partially understand what they are singing or what they are learning. But they are internalizing these ideas in a loving and safe environment. That is how God is working in their lives in the moment.

Of course, that partial understanding can be amusing at times as well. As my daughter sang a VBS song about dancing and singing for her king, I asked her who her king was. She gave me a weird look and after thinking for a moment said her brother’s name. She explained that he was the person she liked to dance and sing with so he must be her king. We had a nice little chat about God being the king of kings, but I was moved that at the age of 5 she grasped the joy and exuberance of worship that song suggests far better than most of us.

God is working in these kids’ lives — often in ways we don’t plan or expect. Creating the space for them to experience God is, for me, at the heart of what it means to serve children. And often in helping create that space, the children in turn teach me something and draw me closer to God.

Read more

Evangelical History

Posted on

I recently stumbled across the book The Young Evangelicals by Richard Quebedeaux. Published in 1974, it gives a sociological overview of evangelicalism in America and the emergence of a (then) new generation of Evangelicals. The author seemed to have hoped that this new generation (who were more globally minded and service oriented than their fundamentalist counterparts) would define the future of the movement. Of course in hindsight, there was a backlash against these more progressive voices (i.e. Jim Wallis…) and the Religious Right ended up gaining the dominant voice in the evangelical world.

What I found fascinating though was seeing a picture of Evangelicalism from this time period that mirrored exactly what I grew up with in the 80’s and 90’s and that still exists today. The young evangelicals of the 1970’s did influence certain streams of evangelicalism, but this more fundamentalist variety retained a dominant voice. Interestingly enough, the streams had so diverged by the end of the 1970’s that people today in either camp are often surprised that the other exists. It’s like how repeatedly on this blog when I share my personal church experience there are always a couple of people who say that I am misrepresenting evangelicals with my portrayals. Of course, not all evangelicals are the same, the stream they know and the stream I know are just very different. I just wish the discussions could sometimes get past the debate of “whose evangelical experience is correct?”

So for instance, take this passage from the book on the role of women in traditional evangelical churches (note – Orthodox here refers to the new orthodoxy of doctrinally correct evangelicals)

Orthodoxy has not yet taken Women’s Liberation seriously. In almost all non-Pentecostal Evangelical or Fundamentalist denominations, women are not ordained to the ministry. “Unmarriageable” types, however, may be encouraged by their churches to make the ultimate sacrifice – to become a missionary. Single females are welcome on the mission field, but not in the home pulpit. Alternatively, an aspiring young lady with a graduate degree in theology might be called by an Orthodox church to become an unordained director of Christian education – for less pay than her ordained male counterpart would get for the same job. But, for a marriageable young lady in the typical Fundamentalist or Evangelical congregation, the highest vocational aspiration she can have is to become the wife of a minister. Every Orthodox pastor – lest he be regarded as a playboy or, worse yet, a homosexual – must have a wife. In taking on a minister, the young woman will lose her identity completely. The ideal pastor’s wife is simply an extension of her mate – sweet, sociable but not aggressive, talented, above reproach in her behavior and, above all, entirely submissive to the will and career of her husband. As such, she becomes a “nonperson” in every sense of the word. P.58-59 

That perfectly describes (in far more blunt language than anyone would ever use today) the sort of evangelicalism I grew up in and still encounter on a regular basis. But many of the women I encounter online (i.e. those who already are educated and progressive enough to be participating in discussions about theology and religion), do their best to deny that women are ever treated that way within the evangelical world they know. While some of them do eventually take the time to reflect and admit that their voice has at times been silenced, they have never had to truly be seen as a “nonperson.” In my experience though women that are taught to lose their identity are also told that they shouldn’t think for themselves, and therefore rarely are present in conversations on religious matters. But it breaks my heart to see generations of women continuing to be taught to be nothing. I grew up in that environment and still have a foot in that world so I know it’s out there. But for many progressive evangelicals (or at least those with progressive evangelical roots), it can be easy to forget history and not grasp the nuances of our differences.

In some ways, just getting a glimpse of this history and understanding differences is helpful. I also wonder though if finding ways to say engage these “nonperson” women and help the ones who are cracking under the pressure of years of suppression of the self would be easier if we all were just open and honest about the sorts of pain that occur in the church without fearing tainting our own church’s reputations due to guilt by association? I don’t know, but sometimes a good understanding of where we all have come from helps mitigate that fear.

Read more

What is Emerging?

Posted on

About a decade ago I recall as a volunteer youth leader at my church sitting in the leader’s training session one evening. This was the time when the youth pastor and pastor would walk us volunteers through the lesson we were to lead the students through each night. The topic for that week was something about basics of the Christian faith and we were to discuss with the kids what exactly theology was. The correct answer we were supposed to give was something about systematic theology using Wayne Grudem’s system as the best example. Somewhat naively I asked, “so why don’t we want the kids to know about all the other ways people do theology?” I was met with blank stares and was told that systematic theology is the only sort of theology there is. I responded, “but what about the Christians in other cultures who don’t think in the same patterns as Westerners who prefer more narrative approaches to theology?” to which I was told, “that stuff isn’t real theology, systematic theology is all that these students will ever need to know about.”

While I might still have that conversation in various churches these days, I feel that something has begun to shift in the church since that time. Our globalized world has forced a new understanding of how we conceive of our faith to emerge. It is harder to deliberately ignore the diversity of voices speaking into this thing we call Christianity. While some might still proclaim the other to be wrong simply for being other, it is impossible to deny that the other exists. This isn’t about being open minded or being politically correct, it is simply a necessary reaction to the nature of the world we live in. Other theologies, other voices, other ways of reading scripture exist (other always being relative to one’s vantage point). We are too interconnected to ignore them or pretend they don’t matter. They are simply part of the air we breathe as Christians which is becoming increasingly impossible to not acknowledge.

I am reminded of how my exasperated professor dealt with my rather obstinate historical research methods class in college. A few of the students had dismissed his attempts to teach them differing approaches to how people approach historical research as supportive of revisionist history (and therefore evil). They desperately wanted to cling to the notion that the “God Blessed America” version of history they believed was in fact the only true version of history – any attempts to tell the stories from the margins of women or minorities were simply revisionist corruptions. So the professor had us read a study that detailed the various ways the history of Williamsburg has been presented to tourists over time. Depending on what was going on in the world at the time, the historical story as it was told by the reenactors varied tremendously over the years. Each version had an agenda and portrayed American colonialism in a way that shored up that agenda. It was difficult for the students who were insisting that the very hero-centric pro-God version taught under the influence of 1950’s anti-communism was the real history to continue to bang that drum when the evidence of how history is manipulated by the teller was laid out so blatantly before their eyes.

The world has been blatantly thrust in front of our eyes, and even the church can no longer resist this emerging consciousness. What stories get told and whose theology gets privileged can no longer be determined out of ignorance. In our interconnected world, the voices of womanist and feminist theologians, the cries of the liberation and postcolonial theologies, and the narrative understandings of scripture that focus on exile, family, and oppression are accessible to even the average Christian. The church is far bigger than some of us might have once believed, we just had to be forced to open our eyes and see it. While this might seem a tad patronizing to those outside the American church system (I can see them rolling their eyes at our elation of our delayed “discovery” of the other), I for one am grateful for this emerging sensibility in the church (even if it is long overdue). Coming face to face with the diversity in our unity might not imply immediate acceptance or respect or understanding, but it pushes us outside of ourselves. Seeing a slightly clearer picture of the world as it is forces us to acknowledge and often wrestle with what we see.

Call it interconnectedness, or globalization, or simply awareness of our neighbor, the church is emerging or perhaps converging upon itself. What gives me hope when I consider what is emerging in the church is that the conversation pushes us into this converging community. And when we are in community, when we start to actually know our neighbors, is when we can start to live out the call to love our neighbors.

This entry is part of a Synchroblog on “What is Emerging?” in the church today. Here’s a list of other contributions to this conversation. I’ll add more as they are posted – feel free to write your own post and send me the link!

Pam Hogeweide compares the emerging church movement to a game of ping pong.
Sarah-Ji comments that the emerging questions people are asking are far bigger than any defined movement.
Sharon Brown writes about using labels as an excuse.
Peter Walker reflects on how the emerging church conversation helped him recognize his power and privlege as a white male.
Dave Huth posts a on new ways to talk about religion.
Kathy Escobar finds hope in seeing a spirit of love in action emerging in the church.
Nadia Bolz-Weber reflects on the the beautiful things she sees emerging in her church community.
Chad Holtz writes on our Our Emerging Jewishness.
Julie Kennedy describes her organic entry into the emerging church and reflects on moving forward with a new public face.
Dave Brown comments on the emerging church and swarm theory.
Danielle Shroyer reflects on what is emerging in the church.
Brian Merritt offers his pros and cons of the emerging church.
Julie Clawson is grateful for emerging globalized Christianity.
Susan Philips points out that emergence happens as G-d redeems our shattered realities.
Mike Clawson reflects on the non-western voices that brought him to the emerging conversation.
Jake Bouma suggest that what is emerging is a collapse into simplicity.
Liz Dyer believes a chastened epistemology is a valuable characteristic emerging out of the church today.
Rachel Held Evans writes on what is changing in the church.
Tia Lynn Lecorchick describes the emerging movement as a wood between worlds (from The Magician’s Nephew).
Amy Moffitt shares her journey towards a theology of humility.
Travis Mamone comments on the need for the emerging church to rely on the word of God.
Sa Say reflects on the the prick of doubt.
David Henson lists what he sees as what is emerging in the church.
Angela Harms writes in in defense of emergent.
Wendy Gritter asks how we can listening to the voices from the margins.
Bruce Epperly comments on the largeness of spirit of emerging spirituality.
Linda Jamentz reflects on listening to the voices from the margins in church.
Lisa Bain Carlton hopes that our emerging conversation can respond humbly to our moment in time.
Christine Sine asks how far are we willing to be transformed.
Lori Allen Wilson reflects on what is emerging in the younger generations.
Cynthia Norris Clack sees love emerging in the church.
Bob Fisher lists the values emerging in his faith community
Mihee Kim-Kort writes of the conversions and conversations she sees around her.
Ann Catherine Pittman believes that what is emerging in the church is inclusivity.
Matthew Gallion describes how emergence is spread thin across the whole church.
Phil Snider offers guarded praise of emergent.

Read more

Radical Inclusion

Posted on

Matthew 21:12-13
Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them,” ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”

The Temple was the center of worship for the Jews. In the scriptures, we are reminded over and over again that true worship is more than rituals, fasting, and sacrifices – it is also about helping those in need, treating people fairly, and welcoming all. So after “triumphantly” entering Jerusalem and reminding people that the Messiah comes to serve and welcome all nations, Jesus proceeds on the Monday of Holy Week to the Temple. But as he enters the temple he sees systems set in place for aiding in sacrifices that apparently were taking advantage of the poor – overcharging them and cheating them on exchange. I’m sure as the scattered Jews trickled in for Passover some people saw them as easy targets to be exploited – all in the name of worship. And Jesus is outraged. He comes in, turns over the tables, and says that stuff about how this should be a house of prayer but it has turned into a den of robbers.

The house of prayer passage Jesus references here (Isaiah 56:7) is one of inclusions – of welcoming the nations. Not just the scattered Jews, but all nations. But in reality, at the Temple it was often more common for exclusions to be upheld. Jesus saw the discrimination against poor and foreign Jews and showed his displeasure. But others were regularly not allowed to fully worship in the temple either. Only Jewish men were allowed inside the Temple proper – women, children, and gentiles were only allowed in the outer courts, and eunuch’s were not even allowed to step foot on temple grounds. But Jesus welcomes even the most despised into God’s Kingdom – giving them a special place. The Messiah extends his grace to all – tearing down barriers of nationality, race, gender, sexuality and ability symbolically in the later rending of the curtain in the Temple and literally in the tangible acts of his kingdom.

In his indignation, Jesus affirms the idea that a place of worship be a “house of prayer” that welcomes even those society typically rejects. Those who seek to worship should not be excluded on any account. For Jesus, his church should always be radically inclusive.

This week I will be cross-posting the reflections I wrote for Journey’s IFC’s blog relating the events of Holy Week to our church’s value statements. Some of these have appeared in different forms here at onehandclapping in the past. Image – “Jesus Drives the Merchants from the Temple” – Nicaragua

Read more

Women, Humility, and Worth

Posted on

I knew I was dreaming when Michelle Obama sat down across from me. I was wearing a formal dress sitting on one of the tall barstools at our local pub, in the quiet back corner near the dartboard. And then Michelle Obama joined me at the table and I started telling her all about my book. Halfway through explaining to her about human trafficking, I thought to myself “I must sound like a complete idiot, trying to tell the First Lady about something I am sure she knows far more about that I do.” And then the self-loathing started as I realized (while still dreaming) that even in my dreams I second-guess myself and feel like an impostor. And I wondered, why do I have to be pathetic even in my dreams?

Forbes Magazine recently posted an article on the high numbers of professional women who constantly feel like they will be called out at any moment as frauds. They are convinced that they are nowhere near as intelligent as everyone seems to think they are and so it is only a matter of time before they are revealed as frauds. The Forbes article of course pointed out how this self-doubt can be detrimental to the success of the business as a whole since when women feel like frauds they are less likely to seize opportunities presented to them. Impostor syndrome causes women to dismiss praise, add disclaimers to their statements, and constantly feel less intelligent or mature than their peers.

In short, to mirror the qualities and virtues of a nice and humble Christian girl.

So while business magazines list the dangers of women being plagued with impostor syndrome, I don’t hear it talked about often in church circles. Self-loathing among women is common, but often it seems that the most vulnerable we can be with each other in Christian circles is to admit to the surface issues. “I’m ugly” or “I’m fat” are safe struggles we can share with each other. As hard as it may be to admit those feelings, at some point we realize that there isn’t a woman out there who doesn’t feel the exact same way. We can dismiss those issues as lies our culture imposes upon us and find affirmation and healing in the love of Jesus (or something like that). But it’s harder to admit to being plagued by self-doubt issues like “I’m not smart enough” or “I’m not successful enough” in a church culture where humility is considered a virtue and women are discouraged from being successful to begin with. So in addition to being scared of being called-out as frauds, in the church we fear being called-out as prideful and ungrateful if we are honest with our struggles.

Many feminist theologians though believe that while pride may be the common sin of men, for women our sin is lack of confidence. Instead of trying to make ourselves into God, we feel so unworthy that we fail to give all of our gifts to God and this world. And yet, we still are instructed over and over again in how to be humble – resulting in women staying silent out of fear of being assertive (prideful), putting disparaging disclaimers before all of our ideas, and shutting ourselves out of opportunities for success, pleasure, friendship, and service because we feel like it would be too forward of us to assume we are equal to interacting fully with our peers.

I know this isn’t everyone’s story, but I’ve seen it often enough to know it’s out there. And it’s generally a story told at the point of utter brokenness – when people are beyond having expectations matter anymore. It’s disturbing though that instead of helping people step confidently into who they were created to be, the church often instead brings people to the breaking point where they can be real only as they are ready to walk away from the church itself. There needs to be a better space for true vulnerability and for re-framing our understanding of virtue. Women shouldn’t be praised for feeling unworthy or for denying that God gave them gifts. We shouldn’t have to be conflicted between following God according to the world’s definition and actually following God. This is about more than confidence and self-worth; it’s about being truthful – something I hope could actually be valued in the church.

Read more

The Missional Church and Worship

Posted on

So while at Urbana, I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion on “The Missional Church and Worship.” I didn’t know much about it going into the discussion, and I quickly discovered that most of the participants were using the term “missional” simply to mean “people who boldly proclaim with words the name of Jesus.”  I wasn’t surprised, but I tried to give my perspective on how being missional involves following Jesus in word and in deed.

In my introductory statements on how I see mission and worship as being one and the same, I brought up what the Bible says about justice and worship.  In Isaiah 1 God says he hates our worship gatherings – finds them meaningless and detestable – if we are participating in injustices and not seeking justice for the oppressed.  And in Isaiah 58 we are told that the sort of worship practices God desires are those that “loose the chains of injustice, and untie the cords of the yoke, set the oppressed free, and break every yoke. To share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood.”  Worship has to be about serving God by serving others.  Worship is mission which is seeking justice for the oppressed.  The Bible is very clear about that and I think we have strayed far too far in the modern church from this biblical conception of worship.  While most Christians might admit (hopefully) that worship isn’t just the singing of songs, I think very few realize that feeding the hungry is an act of worship and devotion to God.  It is something the church must reclaim.

So I made my assertion that a missional church will be seeking justice as an act of worship and I got an interesting response from the audience in return.  One man said that these days he sees certain students caring so much about serving others that they neglect the acts of piety like doing devotions and praying so we need to be careful about encouraging things like seeking justice.  I actually didn’t get a chance to respond to the statement as one of the other panel members jumped in and claimed that practices of piety should always be at the center of our worshiping practices.  My first thought though was, “did this guy miss the part in the Bible where God says he DESPISES our acts of piety if we are not seeking justice at the same time???”  But my next response was to feel heartbroken at how in the American church we have so equated worship with cultural habits that we fail to see how biblical worship is even worship at all.

I know I probably don’t score very well on the typical evangelical worship meter.  I don’t do the singing endless praise choruses thing.  I don’t put “Praise the Lord!” in my Facebook status update at least once a day.  I don’t do fill-in-the-blank “bible studies.”  I don’t read spiritual devotiony sort of books expecting a paragraph or two of religious sounding words to fill me up each morning.  I don’t meet for marathon prayer sessions where I have to pray for someone’s neighbor’s cat or something.  I know all those things work for some people to help them celebrate God, and they used to work for me too, but I’ve realized that I cannot limit worship (and God) by insisting that those cultural habits are the only or best ways to worship God.  Sure, I dig deep into scripture, I pray, and I celebrate God, it’s just that my acts of piety don’t fit the 20th Century American Evangelical Contemporary Christian Subculture box.  And because of that I’ve been accused at times of not being a Christian.  Or at least reminded of what my faith and worship habits should be looking like.

So when I hear a pastor warn against following scripture in order to encourage these cultural habits, I get uneasy.  Worship cannot be confined to a box – be that the box of evangelical devotions or praise music or reformed liturgy or Catholic Mass.  And following the biblical mandate to worship God through seeking justice isn’t in opposition to, but is instead part of personal piety and devotion to God. We are loving God, celebrating God’s greatness, and reflecting God’s glory by participating in the acts of service we are instructed to do.   It isn’t that I seek justice some days and worship on others – it is all worship.   How I meditate on God’s word and how I seek justice for the oppressed will of course look different than how others do it – but we are all still worshiping.

Worship is much bigger than ourselves, and I think to truly be a missional church we need to get over ourselves and our allegiances to cultural habits and start integrating what God said he wants from our worship into what we do.

Read more