Unfortunately, I haven’t done this in a while. I try to summarize the last two weeks post in this podcast, and you can see the long list below. Take a listen and if you like anything then find and read the link to the article below.
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A while ago I asked a number of people for topics to write about. One of them asked me what I thought “the church should look like…” I have been procrastinating on posting about this for a long time. It’s not that I don’t have an opinion and ideas. I think, rather, it’s that I’m not quite sure how to begin articulating those ideas.
I’ve been thinking recently that it would be neat for me to try (this is Zach’s idea) to write a fiction story about a church that embodies the values and lifestyle’s that I think are so central to the teachings of Christ.
Needless to say I’m still not quite sure how I should go about this. But I guess I just need to start.
My first thought about what any given church should look like is that it should be representative of the community it is in. Far too many people commute to their church and thus the church, the community, and the homes of the members are all complete spread out and seperate entities.
If you want to know what I think your church should look like then go to this link. Type in the address of your church and look at the statistics that come up for the surrounding community.
When you look at the statistics you see, do you feel they are accurately represented in your church body? Why or why not?
It’s over a week since the Easter holiday, so I feel safe venturing some critiques about it. My friend Bryan pointed out that there hasn’t been much outrage around Easter about the bunny and eggs.
During Christmas there was so much outrage at the idea of calling the evergreens people where buying “Holiday Trees.” When my mom was growing up they had a Hanukkah Bush. My family had decorations for Christmas and Hanukkah (as well as a strange assortment of other family ornaments). Mindy and I have not had a tree in our living room since we’ve been married, and yet I don’t think we missed out on anything essential concerning the birth of Jesus. Celebrating the birth of Jesus is a good thing, but his birth is not what is central or pinnacle to the Christian faith; it’s his resurrection.
I wonder then, where is the outrage at Jesus’ resurrection being taken over by a giant bunny that hands kids pastel eggs full of candy? If you ask me, that’s what people should be upset about. I think it’s probably because nobody’s trying to trump the word “Easter.” Maybe they’d be bothered if someone decleared it the Buddha Bunny? Or what about just “The Bunny” leaving “Easter” out all together?
My point in saying all that is not to incite outrage over the Easter bunny or to start a boycott of pastel eggs. I think I’m just bothered by the lack of consistency and focus on such unimportant things. Let other’s call the evergreens what they want, maybe you should be ditching the Easter bunny altogether. Probably we should be spending a little more time trying to explain why some old guy dying and then rising from the dead is so important to our children. Believe me, you’ll have your work cut out for you.
So this is my rant about music at church (aka “Worship Music”):
Why don’t we do what the song says? You go into most churches today and they are singing the cool and popular worship songs. And you and everyone around you is belting out the words to the song. “I’m falling on my knees…” and as they sing the words, what happens? Well most of the churches I’ve been to everyone stays standing or sitting or whatever they where doing. It would seem to me that if I were to walk up to you and say “I’m falling on my knees” and didn’t actually do it, you might be suspect of the next few things I said (and if you know the words of the song you’ll have an idea of what I’m talking about).
I just don’t understand how we can all be okay with singing these songs that have us voicing actions we are taking.
But when the world has seen the light, They will dance with joy, Like we’re dancing now
And we stand around looking like a bunch of dorks.
I lift my hands up…
I bow down…
There’s a long list and I won’t go into them now, but it’s always been a point of struggle for me.
An then there is the other side of it. Even though I’m the one that has a problem with this and it bothers me and all, I very rarely actually follow through myself. Mostly I think I worry about getting looked at with all sorts of judgements, “look at him trying to act better then everyone; more religious; pious.” So I often opt for not singing that particular song, or line in the song, or halfway, top secretly raising my hand or bending my knees, etc. And this needs to be changed also.
In high school with my youth group I would point it out; these days I don’t. That’s the tough part, how do we encourage change in this? Should the folks playing the insturments up front be in charge of encouraging people to “do” what they “say”? They are the “leaders” after all.
I just picture someone visiting most churches today and hearing them sing “I could sing of your love forever” and hearing these words
But when the world has seen the light, They will dance with joy, Like we’re dancing now
And walking out the door to search for joy elsewhere.
Overflowmag.com posted the first Alumni story that it will be covering in the weeks leading up to Soulforce coming to the Wheaton campus.
For some reason, it is really pissing me off. I am not grandstanding and I am not ashamed. I just want to let my peers know that I had a kid.
Please go and read the story.
This week Ariah and Zach come to you very clearly (maybe even from the same room). The topic conversations are on Soulforce and Socially Responsible Investing, to unrelated topics (though they both start with “S”) but a very interesting podcast nonetheless.
Please send your feedback and thoughts to ariahfine@gmail.com or call and leave an audio message at (615)349-1210 (and now you can even leave a reply message at Odeo).
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Some Brief Shownotes:
A friend of mine asked me to reflect on my time at Wheaton and expressed a little about what I have learned from my time there. Rather then bring up a number of unrelated things in one post I thought I would just post as the reasons and situations come to mind.
I had the great opportunity to met with the Chaplain at Wheaton for an exit interview in the spring of my senior year. At gave me a chance to reflect on the good and bad of my time and I came up with a handful of things that I thought where the most wide spread, not necessarily just specific to my personal experience. The one I had the hardest time explaining is the one I’ll start with: The lifestyle of Wheaton College instills underlying assumptions that keep us from following Christ fully.
When I first got to Wheaton I thoroughly enjoyed the nice big dorm rooms, the fancy Lego-like furniture; I loved the food at the cafeteria and the fact that people cleaned up after me everywhere I went. I enjoyed seeing the flowers planted around campus and the nice architecture. The Student Rec Center was state-of-the-art and the classrooms had all the technology needs you could imagine. I enjoyed all of these things, and I justified in my mind that during my time of diligent studies it was nice to be in a comfortable environment with everything taken care of. Sophomore year, a campaign to build a $20 million student center began, and I suddenly realized the great tragedy of having all we had at Wheaton.
You see, when you sit in a “Christian” Institution, listening to a “Christian” teacher, amongst “Christian” peers, you have an immediate assumption that the Lifestyle, the buildings, the spending being done in your community is therefore “Christian.” But that is not necessarily true.
When you sit in the coffee shop of an extravagant student center and read Jesus words about caring for the poor, it is hard to acknowledge that your fancy community might be in conflict with really carrying that out.
I fear too many students have left Wheaton with this assumption: I can buy a big house, an expensive car, fancy clothes and furniture, take exotic vacations, live the high society life, AND still follow Christ call to take up their cross and follow him.
Dorothy Day, declared a Servant of God by the Catholic Church, is well known for her Social Justice work and helping start the Catholic Worker Movement. She is truely a great leader both of her day and for us now. I couldn’t find a good collection of her powerful words so I thought I’d leave you with some here. I’ll write more of my thoughts later.
Quotes from Dorothy Day:
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
The work is more important than the talking and the writing about the work.
I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions
Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
Young people say, What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at at time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action in the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.
The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?
Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up.
(The following are from a compilation by Robert Ellsberg as published in Geez Magazine)
Love of Brother means…non-participation in those comforts and luxuries which have been manufactured by the exploitation of others.
Poverty means having a bare minimum in the way of clothes and seeing to it that these are made under decent working conditions, proper wages and hours, etc. The union label tries to guarantee this.
Poverty means not riding on rubber while horrible working conditions prevail in the rubber industry. Poverty means not riding on rails while bad conditions exist in the coal mines and steel mills. Poverty means not accepting that courteous bribe from railroads, the clergy rate.
Of course, we are not all given the grace to do such things. But it is good to call to mind the vision. It is true, indeed, that until we begin to develop a few apostles along these lines, we will have no mass conversions, no social justice, no peace. We need saints. God, give us saints!
How far we all are from it! We do not even see our infirmities. Common sense tells us, “Why live in a slum? It is actually cheaper to live in a model housing project, have heat and hot water, a mauve or pink bath and toilet, etc. We can manage better; we have more time to pray to meditate, study….Yes, we will have more time with modern conveniences, but we will not have more love.
Today I was talking with a friend about some of the word’s of Jesus and it became so clear to me why I think the church should care about justice, should care about others, and shouldn’t just look like another club that people can join (as long as you look, act, and enjoy the same things as the majority of the people in the club). Jesus messes with people’s heads and says these words:
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”
The cross was a method of gruesome punishment, like the electric chair, or lynching. It’s equated with pain, struggle, hurt, and many other harmful and negative images; and Christ tells us to take that up. And then he get’s us even more backwards “lose” our life? What is that supposed to mean?
I’m not hear to do a theological exegesis of the passage, I’d rather just address the fact that THIS is the Jesus that we in the Church profess. There it is as plain as day for any passerby to read. Followers of Jesus should be denying themselves.
So why do those looking on see Christians drive in on Sunday in their fancy cars, pull up to their nice and decked out churches, listen to their health and wealth gospel, sing some feel-good songs, get back in their cars and go out to eat (where they don’t tip well), and head back to their house full of the same gadgets and gizmos everyone else has, ready to start another week?
Where’s the “deny” and “lose” in that? About the only “cross” it seems like most Christian folks are taking up is their house payment. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.
Ariah and Zach discuss Bible translations and whether Ariah should be reading through The Message as his Bible reading this year.
Some of the Show Notes:
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