Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Wedding
Roy and Bethany recite their vows.
First kiss!
And, of course, we had to celebrate! Roy and Bethany have been having some landlord trouble (all too common on the Northside, where it is easy to victimize the poor). They had walked a long way to get to the church. And they were just going to go home. Well, we could not do that! I had just reminded them in the service that Jesus had "adorned" a wedding at Cana. And if I remember right, there was a party, a party that His first miracle kept rocking! So it was off to Golden Corral!
The Happy Couple!
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Over the Top
Top of the world!
Me and my boys!
First glimpse of the Pacific!
Ica and her boys.
We made it!
The drive was awesome, well worth it. The boys said multiple times, "Thank you for taking us here, Daddy!" We think next time we come back, we'll bring a tent and camp at one of the camp sites in the Los Padres Forest. I could do with some exploring!
Great Drive
I love Big Sur, and I love the Salinas Valley. It seemed a beautiful way to explore both. Here' s some pix of the drive. I apologize that I am not a good photographer. The good ones are Ica's.
You leave Hwy 101 and head down the Jolon Rd onto Fort Hunter Liggett. Sign in and the Army wonders why you're from KY going this way. Are you lost? No, I know exactly what I am doing.
You don't have to be crazy to drive this road, but it helps.
The view of the mountains, with tank.
Into the mountains
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Vacation Musings
Being in
I think my grandfather is the patron saint of carrots. I have never had much success with carrots. But this year… wow. I guess I harvested about 1000 carrots. I turned it over completely to the Lord. But man, my grandfather could grow some carrots.
At the beach on the
And then I think about the tide pools all over the
“Wave after wave will flow with the tide
And bury the world as it does.
Tide after tide, each will flow and recede,
Leaving life to go on as it was”
I think I have
Last night, we had a real
Here’s a story. So we’re at the beach. John, Joe and I are skipping rocks. The waves were coming farther and farther up, and occasionally one would really come in hard and fast. I told the boys to step back. But as a wave went out, Joe saw a cool rock and he dashed for it. I hollered at him to get back and next thing he knows, he gets rolled by the wave! It knocks him down and for a second I am thinking he may be getting tugged out. He rights himself on all fours and starts hollering for me. As he starts crawling in like a wet pup, I can laugh and get after him for not listening to me… it’s nice when there is an immediate consequence to his not listening… So that cut short our day of elephant seal watching. We had a good laugh on the way home—there’s Joe in the back, naked except for
Friday, December 26, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
biketruck
No problem at all on the extracycle. I'd even say I was getting it down Limestone. As I was walking it out, it was unbalanced and wobbly, but once I got on, it was fine. In fact it's so smooth that when I had to call Martina to find an address for delivery, I was able to dial and talk with one hand while steering with the other, pedaling thru the trailer park, maneuvering past potholes and going over speed bumps. All while fully loaded.
Clifton threatened to send me to Eastern State Hospital-- not for the bike, but because it was so cold out.
By the way the extracycle is banged up and and dirty. I am trying to talk John and Laura into getting one, so I let him ride it. He did. And scraped my wide loaders (the platform that adds three feet to the width so you can carry heavier loads and long cargo). And immediately after he got on it, he took it to the drainage basin to see if you can ride in the mud. Yeah. Thanks.
Any little way we can stick it to the oil sheiks is what we need to do.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Monday Night
At dinner, it seemed really nice and calm, in spite of the fact that we did not have as many volunteers as usual. And we all got time to sit down and talk with people. we're learning to not simply listen-- as if our lives are too mundane, not edgy enough, or as if we are somehow therapists. Rather, we are also telling our stories--otherwise we'll never get to know them.
A man came up and said, "I am 70 years old and have never heard anyone talk as much about Jesus as you do." Well, I am a preacher... but at the same time, it's sad. This is it: Christians just keep it to themselves. While we argue and write and go to conferences about what's relevant, there's folks not even hearing about Jesus.
A woman said, "Since we have been coming on Monday nights, we've had more peace in our marriage."
I wish I had the money to open up a dinner, food and clothing pantry every night of the week. Nothing but evangelism.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
First Trip
But it was awesome to go to the grocery store and realize you can get all your stuff on there. I'd say just the bags could hold 8 full sacks. It doesn't take all that much longer and it is a work out. Next time, two bikes.
I guess an extracycle is a strange thing; we're used to bikes as toys or as racing machines, not so much practical tools for getting around. This is an interesting step for us, getting some equipment that will let us ride bikes to do almost everything we have done with a car.
And, too, it's nice to have Ica; she's weird enough to get an extracycle and ride on the back, and tough enough to ride me on the back. As Martina said when she saw the bike and our excitement, "You two are lucky you found each other..."
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Yeehaw
We were so excited when we got a call from Matt down at PedalPower. "Aaron, your Diamondback is now an extracycle!"
You can't tell it's on there. It doesn't change the ride. Maybe the hill at 5th street is more of a bummer.
Ica says she knows how to put pix on the blog, so maybe we'll get some.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends
Some days you can’t believe the kind of crap that has to come your way.
Then, if you’re lucky—really, it’s if you have someone close to you who can remind you of this—you will remember to not try to fix it solve it or take control.
A real blessing is if that person can also help you avoid getting dragged into the mania of others for a plan, a response. It’s one thing for you yourself to be abandoned to God, knowing that there is nothing you can do, nothing you need to do, other than let Him work. It is another thing entirely to avoid letting others take you captive to the world again. Giving into their fears, allowing their need for someone to be in control—as flattering as it may be when they are hopeful that you are in control—it takes real spiritual power to avoid this.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
The Little Seminary
Tonight, Joseph asked if he could pray as we were putting the boys to bed. He asked us what we wanted to pray for. He said, “I want to put them in a sentence like you do, Daddy.” After he did so, I told him, “Wow! You just did a pastoral prayer! That’s awesome, Joe!”
He likes to jump off John’s bed into my arms and I catch and in one motion swing him across the room onto his bed. He asked as he was going through the air and landing on the bed, “I can be a pastor like you?”
It’s interesting what the boys see. John is interested in preaching. Joe is interested in praying. About a week ago he asked me how I put all the prayer concerns into a sentence. Somewhere in all this, he resonates with prayer. I remember a time in
Jessica tells a story how she learned to pray when she was about six, learning/knowing/believing that God was always a prayer away, right there, available for her no matter how hard things got in life. The boys hear her child-like prayers and know they can say whatever.
Poll
Good Book
Monday, December 15, 2008
Smoke 'em if you got 'em/Snippets of poetry
I am always blown away how no matter how cold it, folks will sit outside and smoke.
Cold, icy weather, or the threat of it, makes me remember my best friend from seminary, David Crow. He died in winter, and I could not get to his side because of the bad weather. The
There was worry tonight with the folks coming to the food and clothing ministry that the cold weather was going to make it hard to get home. We had a good meal—meat loaf, corn, green beans, mashed potatoes.
4 people came forward wanting to be baptized.
There’s a guy who has really not liked me for as long as I have been here. No problem, he was at a table, no way he could escape, so I sat down next to him and talked. He told us about some adventures he has had. I ain’t hurtin’ nobody, ain’t hurtin’ no one.
Chaucer said of his Clerk (cleric), “gladly wold he lerne, and gladly teche:”
A few people came up to me and said the service needs to be longer. There was some serious conviction there. Basically, I have been selling the people short. Maybe it’s feeling self-conscious about knowing that the crowd can sometimes be hostile; some people are there just for the food and they wish we’d just hurry up. And then, there are those who simply cannot be in the presence of Jesus. You start preaching and they get up and leave.
At least they’re honest. Good, respectable Christians, now they’re the ones who will glad-hand you after Sunday service and run you down as soon as they think they’re with people who love to complain. What are they so scared of? They can tell me what they think—or perhaps they are ashamed of what they think?
Well, I have to one degree or another considered the service to be more of a talk, more of an evangelistic conversation. Yet, they need the Word and want the Word. And they asked for it. Wow.
Sam came to help. She tried to talk her brother into it, because, she said, “being a Christian means helping others and being in fellowship with other believers.” I hope Sam doesn’t grow up to become an adult. It’ll be all over then. She’ll say she’s too busy to serve and has too much money just to give it away… Anyway, after dinner was served, she took the kids to the library and read them a bit of a book.
After the service, I went to get some milk and bread, wondering why it is so easy for me. I just go and get food. I have the money. It can’t be hard work, because as Merle Haggard sang,
“been workin every day since I was twenty
haven’t got a thing to show for anything I’ve done
there’s folks who never work but they’ve got plenty”
On the way to the store, a song that brings back so many memories and seems so appropriate after some of the folks I sat with at table. “Aqualung:”
Do you still remember December’s foggy freeze?
How the ice that clings on to your beard, it was screaming agony
And you snatched a rattling last breath with deep sea-diver sounds
And the flowers bloomed like madness in the spring?
Friday, December 12, 2008
Chaos, Confusion, Persecution, Creativity
At
You’ve heard me talk about a direction for Christian ministry, where we grow from doing ministry to people (handing out food baskets, clothing, medical care), on to doing ministry with people (getting to know them not only at the point of service, but meeting at home, having dinner, allowing them to do the work alongside you) and then the goal of doing ministry from them, where they develop ministries. It means that you have to let go. You don’t simply teach them to become like you and let them in on your leadership team, you are actively seeking to leave, to let them lead and develop ministries. Then, they, too give up their positions as another group that was ministered to becomes the leaders.
I was telling Jim that this is my philosophy and the direction that I have pushed the church.
Jim started with a low whistle. “As you’re in that turning point, it means chaos, confusion, persecution… but also creativity. So you probably have some people calling you every name in the book? [Wow, is Jim an invisible member of our church?] But I bet you’re also seeing people step up in new ways with new ideas?” Yeah. Not as much as I’d like, but yeah.
In this turning point, on this edge, there is chaos and confusion. That is, worship attendance is up by almost 150 since the beginning of the year. It’s hard to absorb that. Sunday School has ramped up. Monday night missions are a new beast. When so many people and so many new things come up, it’s hard to keep it organized.
Persecution comes in many forms, but the worst one, the most dangerous is when people new in their faith, or stepping out on faith to do something beyond their power get attacked or pushed aside. Sometimes that comes from within the church, as we can’t manage our anxiety about change (thus the amazing conversation I had with one woman who was put out because she did not know “who all these people are,” or where they were coming from). Sometimes it comes from the evil one who wants to torment and discourage. (Thus the conversation with someone on the edge of faith asking when life will get easier. Friend, it won’t. It will get harder. But you’ll have Jesus!)
The creativity makes it worth it. New ways of worshipping, new ways of reaching out, letting God work where He wants to. We have a staff that doesn’t need to be told what to do—they do it. We have so many volunteers (especially the ones who used to be ministered to!). There will come a time, perhaps it has come, where so many forces come together that we can’t resist where God leads; it will be so plain and so clear.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Onion John
There’s a book I read as a child, Onion John. I keep a list starting from a few years back of books I read as a child that I really liked. Now, I get to share them with the boys. Rasmus the Vagabond, by Astrid Lindgren, is a hard one to find. If anyone has a copy… Anyway, Onion John.
It’s a story about a middle school boy who befriends the town eccentric, the title character, Onion John. Onion John is a peasant from an unnamed Eastern European country who has ended up a long-term resident in the boy’s
But he’s a bit of a nut. He lives in a stone hut he has built on the edge of town, in a field the townsfolk let him have. He is one of those “collectors” who has all kinds of stuff squirreled away.
Well, he and the boy, Andy, start a friendship. But the boy’s father is not too pleased. As the story progresses, tho, the father actually comes to know Onion John, even to become something like friends with him. The problem of the story comes when the father decides that the Rotary Club should build Onion John a proper house. The town comes together in a sort of frenzied building. They make Onion John a really nice house. But Onion John is increasingly frustrated—he’s losing the weird touches of his homemade house. He is told that the four bathtubs he uses to store all kinds of stuff need to go. He loses his precious wood-burning stove. All this for a real house—warm, dry, electric appliances. Who wouldn’t want that?
Everyone is rightfully proud of what they have done. They put time, money, effort, consideration into the house. The only one they did not really consider was Onion John. They assumed he wanted and needed what they themselves would want and need.
The way it all unravels: Onion John wants to heat the house up. But instead of turning up the thermostat, he piles some paper on the eye of the stove—makes sense to him, used to firing up a wood-burning stove—and the house burns down.
There are some thoughts about getting the insurance to rebuild, but it dawns on people that maybe they should have let Onion John be. He ends up leaving town—having lost two homes.
I guess I read the story again, read it to the boys as well, for some subconscious reasons. Our work in ministry, particularly at the Rock is about changing lives through the Lordship of Jesus Christ. But what will happen if we believe that conversion, or the work of the Holy Spirit in a believer means that they have to become like us?
Or if we think that a real life is the middle class life?
Or if we think that what we’re looking for is what everyone else is looking for?
How much freedom is there in the Gospel?
An incident: I saw the truck of a fellow who hangs around our ministry. It’s a disaster inside. All kinds of stuff all over the place. Kind of like what Onion John’s truck would look like, I suppose. I wondered, “is there a witness here? A negative witness?” That is, if people saw such a truck with the bible on the dash, would they say, “there can’t be a Christian here, this is too disorderly. Obviously, this guy’s a mess!” Or could it be, “if being a Christian doesn’t change this, then phooey!” Of course, pretty much everything the fellow owns is in this vehicle! Is Jesus supposed to fix that? For whom? Us? The guy? The Kingdom?
There was a tough moment, two tough moments, about two weeks ago. Maybe only three people know about it, because it stayed in the spiritual realm and did not break out and tear people down. It was a moment where I feared that we as a church had pushed some people to take on some things, had offered the opportunity for people to look and act like normal middle class white people. I saw very clearly that we had thus exposed them to severe danger—the vulnerable, when they step up, are in the sights of the evil one and they need special intercession, which I was not giving them! I was in some turmoil, thinking that the shepherd had not prepared the table that exists in the midst of enemies. They were just in the midst of enemies.
And the attacks came hard. By the grace of God, we came through. And we needed to do nothing but pray. It’s never too late to pray, that’s the lesson.
Well, one of the lessons. The other one is exactly the challenge I have posed to the church. Not I, but Jesus. It is the challenge to quit doing ministry to people. To start doing it with them. And finally to let it emerge from them. That kind of church will be… hard. Hard on the face of it because leadership looks different when done by different cultures. And who gives up leadership? What if every person involved in ministry at The Rock right now would have to give up their position and status and sense of approval in order to let ministry flow from the community? Would we? Could we?
That is, can we avoid making them like Onion John, thinking they will be ready to lead when they see things like we do, live like we do, want what we want? At the end of the day, we don’t know how to manage or control people who don’t want what we want. There is no leverage. And then, too, we face a difficulty: who wants to let go of their position? If, as in the case of church ministry, we would be letting go not only of our “say,” but also that warm fuzzy feeling we got when we did something for or to someone, will we let it go?
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
More Wildness
Tonight was huge, too, 88 kids. The kitchen staff worked hard. We have new volunteers in the ministry, so we are absorbing the numbers pretty well.
I knew it was going to be big before it started: there were 11 kids at the church half an hour before the children's time started. As I was letting them in and they were pressing through the doorway, John hollered out, "Orcs must be free!!"
I guess there is such a thing as too much Lord of the Rings.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
All kinds of fun
On the way into church, Joe grabbed some wrestlers and was frantically looking for the championship belt. I told him we had to go NOW. He kept looking. I said we really had to go and I did not care if he could not find the belt. So he huffed and said, "Fine, I'll just have to have a money-in-the-bank match."
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Merry Christmas!
This seems like an appropriate time to say, "Merry Christmas, and Mohammad was a liar."
Friday, November 21, 2008
Nascent Fables
If I had more time, I’d write these fables myself. As it is, I can only give you the outline.
First fable. There’s a shepherd who listens to his sheep and lets them head into dangerous places, because it’s just what they want to do.
Second fable. There’s a wolf who had been busted for wearing sheep's clothing. But he goes to the shepherd who lets the wolf move in with the flock because the wolf assures him that he has had an “experience” and no longer has a taste for mutton.
Maybe they are the same fable. Maybe the shepherd just wants to be cool. Maybe the shepherd went to one of those shepherd schools where they teach you that to be a successful shepherd you must, at all costs, be liked.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
So I am taking a few looks at The Rock La Roca. Wild stuff happening. From the important, basic things like we have a handle on our administration. Martina Ockerman has brought efficiency and professionalism to the church. We have detailed budgets and accounts, things we’ve never had before. I guess the thing Martina has brought to us is a real gift: we are all very ministry-oriented. That is, I have a staff that flat-out gets after it. We’re never in the office, a value I have pushed on them. Get on the street. Meet the people. Meet the needs. Come up with new ministries, plans. I tell them that I won’t get mad if they do something and it flops. Better to do something than do nothing. But since we’re always out there on the front, we’re not quite as good at taking care of the business side of things. Martina has set us free to get after the work. And Martina herself gets on the street, too!
And then there’s the stuff we’re set free for! This huge Monday night ministry—a meal, food bank, and service.
After school music program for kids, with a meal.
A church plant.
70 kids at the Wednesday night program. If you’re a kid, you can eat three nights a week at the church. Good food.
Maybe 10% of our worshipers are African-American. I think this happened without trying. I mean, I have been wondering how to reach out, worrying if we could make the shifts necessary. But apparently, if you flow out of the love of Jesus, you can be as white as you want to be and still reach everyone!
I am probably missing something.
I don’t know what else will happen, but I can’t wait to see.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
We walked back home under a moon playing hide-and-seek with us. We have been talking a bit lately about how there is a lack of “conversation.” That is, most folks don’t have much to say. There’s not much room for serious engagement of ideas. As we walked home, we wondered how it is that most of our best conversations happen outside of the church. I mean, that’s good because we’re engaging with non-believers. But it’s also sad, because if people could get past having their ideas under scrutiny, we could all learn a lot and have a great time.
Any time you talk to Jim, you come back pumped up for gardening. I hope the idea of our garden can get bigger. Quickly. I don’t want to just grow stuff. I want to find better ways to draw growing and eating together. How can we share in the growing and the eating? How can we work in the dirt and sit around the table? This is where real, life-changing fellowship will grow. I wish I had a monastery, a place where I could take some of our hurting kids, put them down in a safe place where they could rest and flourish. In the meantime, the garden will have to do. But it will have to do better.
That was last night. Worship this morning was awesome.
Well, after the sermon, John went up to the altar. His first time. I asked him why he went up. He said, “I was praying for Joe-Joe.”
“What did you pray for?”
“That he would remember something about Mommy.”
A few weeks ago, Joe woke up crying in the middle of the night, missing Melissa. I held him and told him stories about Melissa, things he might remember. But he was just so little in all this. John was laying in the bed, not sure what to do or say. I guess he knew what to do this morning.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Holler in the City
On my end of
I found the usual: a canyon, we’d call it out west, a draw that ended with a hill surrounding three sides of it. Some trailers and a lot of scrap metal around. Not much grows in such places because the trees on top of the hill shade the floor below.
I was met at the trailer at the head of the holler by the patriarch, and old man with a beard down to his waist. My kind of guy! He listened with interest to who I was and then commented, “I knew you had to be someone special. You’re the only stranger that dog has never tried to eat,” and he pointed to a mean-looking dog I had not even noticed, curled up in a corner outside the house.
I have long said that the best preparation for urban ministry is rural ministry. They share the same problems, but rural ministry is usually a little friendlier, so you get broken in a bit more gently. Rural and urban areas suffer from isolation, despondency, lack of opportunity, being forgotten by the rest of the society. When they are remembered, it’s to be made fun of, if not completely degraded. “Trailer trash” are the new “niggers.”
This is all to say that I ended up in a holler on the Northside of Lexington on Thursday. Jessie and I were out doing pastoral visits, and we came to a very small dead-end street that is less a street and more the pattern of a holler—houses strewn about. It’s an enclave. Even tho no real geographic barrier prevents you from going down the street, why would you?
But these are some of my newest people, so I go.
I think that the isolation of this street, right in the middle of thousands of people, is a refuge. The folks who are on the street are on it out of social ties; that is where, a holler in
I wish you could have been there with me, to be invited in, to have a chance to read 1 Peter 1:1-9 to them (words that 2000 years are re-filled up with meaning for this flock), to get to pray, to hear the devotion of a husband to his sick wife.
Have you ever seen ‘em pack the kids in the car after work on a Friday night,
Pull up in the holler ‘round three a.m. lights still burning bright?
Those mountain folk stayed up all night
Just to hold those little grandkids in their arms.
I’m proud to say I’ve been blessed by their sweet hillbilly charm.
--Dwight Yoakam, “Readin’, Writin’, Route 23”
Boys
Wow.
We’ve been doing some family devotions out of a Veggie Tales book, and then we have prayer and communion together, before bed time. For some reason, the past two nights, we have read out of a child’s bible that John has. Last night, it was really wonderful.
John read the story, about Jacob and Esau. I was not sure if Joe was going to follow it because John was reading at his pace (but I guess children know exactly how to follow along with that!) At the end of the story, just when Jessie and I were about to start off some discussion, John did! He asked what we thought was the point of the story. Joe raised his hand and said, “it’s because the two brothers were fighting about the blessing.”
“So it’s in the category of jealousy?” John asked. I was wondering where he got the words, “category of jealousy…”
It was a sweet, wonderful, telling moment: the boys are perfectly capable of reading and understanding the Scriptures. In fact, you have to wait for the time when they are going to see more clearly than we do, what the point is.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Why I Did Not Vote
I did not vote in this last election. I noticed that my last post on Wal-Mart had some friends howling at me, tho I have not seen any comments. I suppose what I’ll say here will seem the same. I guess I should also say that I like to debate, and so if I’m wrong here, let me know. But I probably won’t think so without some real help!
The reasons why I did not vote go back a bit. Well, there is only one reason, really. I don’t want to be involved in what is going to happen over the next few years. So I was not going to give a vote one way or the other. Here’s how I came to that conclusion.
I had voted in every election since 1988. But I only voted for a major party candidate once. I voted Libertarian every other time.
The proximate cause for my decision came a little over a year ago at a fund-raising banquet. A speaker, by way of talking about inspiration in his life, praised Eisenhower. Now, Eisenhower was a great man and president. But in other spheres, I am not sure he can be accepted that way. I am a Methodist pastor. And one of my pastor-brothers is a man from
Then, Sojourners had an editorial on Robert Kennedy and how his assassination crushed the dreams of a generation. That was a bit much, given that we should not put our hope in men or kings. There was also something in praise of JFK. All of which is fine. Great men. And yet, I began to think we should not be surprised they were assassinated. I know it is a deep wound in the country’s history, but they were involved in assassinations of other world leaders, and best I can tell, you live by the sword, you die by it as well. It seems to me that if the Book of Kings were written today, and we were looking at, for example, the Kennedys, they would be in the categories of Ahab and Omri, with touches of Josiah and Hezekiah.
So, basically, that night at the banquet I was sad. What if Rev. Lumumba were there to hear praise for the man who either had his father killed or could have saved him? How can I praise Obama? He will be part of shady dealings in his administration. And clearly, unborn people are in more danger than they have been in years. Bloody years ahead: on the battlefield, in hidden places around the world, and in the womb. I simply did not want to have my name attached to any of it.
But I take a second look. Peter Storey preached a sermon on the eve of elections in
I think this is the only thing I have heard about Christian politics that makes any sense.
Then there’s this. If we’re so much in an “empire” as is fashionable to say now, then why do we not act like Christians in the Empire? This has been a question I have been asking for about 5 years—not because I believe we’re in anything like
But was this the Apostles’ way because they were disenfranchised? Would they vote if they could? Would they care to?
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Wal-Mart Church
If you watch the stock market reports, there’s something you should pay attention to. The big number, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, is a composite of the top companies on the stock exchange. So while that number has been in free-fall (it was about 14,000 a year ago, just above 8000 now), a company on that list has not only not collapsed, but has gained, showing a 10% growth in profits: Wal-Mart.
Now, it’s fashionable to hate Wal-Mart, to cry about mom-and-pop stores on Main Street run out of business (no one asked who mom-and-pop ran out of business), to fuss about what the workers are paid or how good their insurance is (would they have any job or any insurance from mom-and-pop?). There is a disturbing side to hating Wal-Mart. It is, at base, a form of class-warfare, class- and even race-hatred hiding behind some kind of enlightened plan for the proletariat.
Wal-Mart has a business model that has been my model for church growth. I don’t mean selling stuff at low prices (although I suppose that if you compared my salary to any other United Methodist pastor, I am definitely underselling them. The Rock is the only church with 300 people that no one wants!) Wal-Mart’s core commitment is to families making less than $30,000 a year.
You laugh and think, how many people is that? Even if it’s not a huge number of people, it’s a population no one else works with, markets to (except Rent-A-Center and Check Exchange places—now those are evil industries all you cool people need to jump on, not Wal-Mart). So Wal-Mart has an edge over other companies who think that they need to market their business to the folks with money, disposable income, so to speak. It’s working, obviously. I know people who gripe about Wal-Mart and all they can do is be ashamed when I catch them there.
Back in the day, I was tired of working for the
So for a few years I have had it in my head that apparently anyone can put up a warehouse in the burbs, plug in some amps and video screens and fail miserably. They’re even failing miserably when they pack the place, but that’s another story. But what kind of fool plants a church downtown? Um, that would be
But it’s not lunacy. Wal-Mart is making a killing. Maybe we’ll be able to, as well.
Finally, tho, the issue of hating Wal-Mart rears its head in many ways. Do we hate Wal-Mart for imagined oppression of its workers, or because if Wal-Mart succeeds, the poor will be able to break out of our last hold on them: the display we make of them. The fundamental feature of poverty is being on display. They don’t look like us, talk like us, smell like us… but many more of them now can break out of the display we would make of them—because of Wal-Mart.
A Wal-Mart church ought to be no surprise. Wal-Mart has said, “Comprehension of the market is upon me, and the inevitable conclusion is that we must bring low prices to the poor.” I wonder if the Church can get this? I mean, can the
The place where we diverge from Wal-Mart is in profit. We’re not going to make much money. In fact, it may cost us some money. That is, we might have to act like Christians. We will no longer be able to say that a church has to be a self-funded entity. We will say that if there is anyone hungry the rest of us will fast until there is enough to eat. We will pay for and send out apostles where the people are and set up not just missions or stopping points for our motorcades of generosity that swoop in and leave, but we will set up churches, where the Word is preached and spirit and stomach is filled with the goodness of the Lord. This is hard because we are tight-fisted. It’s one thing that in our school system we don’t support the poor kids; it is another entirely, one certainly for judgment, when the church will not provide worship for the poor. It is hard, but our Bishop has said we must be willing to afford the poor.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Sunday Dinner
It seems that a lot of good things happen in the kitchen. I find myself wishing that I had paid more attention to my mom in the kitchen. For starters, I would not be playing catch-up so much on cooking. For another, I would have noticed how much love starts there. It’s not just Kim Newman saying “sex starts in the kitchen.” It’s more the simple things. One evening, I made some fried potatoes to go with pork chops. I suppose I diced them up because the boys like them small and it cooks all the way through—seems to taste better.
Sundays we relax after church and do a bit of cooking for a good Sunday meal that will give us some leftovers. Most times it’s roast chicken. The stray cat (ok, so he’s not stray anymore. Jessie set him up a pallet in a big plastic bin turned to the house so he is out of the wind and getting some warmth from the walls. And Joe has trimmed the cat’s whiskers—the cat sat there in his lap while he did it. The cat loves Joseph. Now there’s talk of getting him a flea collar); anyway, the stray cat eats the heart and liver they put in the chicken.
Tonight it’s roast. Sara will eat with us and so will Leo, and if we’re lucky, Leo will spend the night and there will be coffee drunk and Jesus spoken of. There’s an added treat. The carrots are coming on, and so I got to go out in the front yard and pull up three turnips and some of my Half-long carrots. The kitchen smells like dirt, carrots, and garlic.
And if you’re lucky, or maybe just really good, the conversation can be deep and good. I am longing for the kinds of discussion that are not trite or simple, that touch on deep stuff we may not agree on. And even if opinions are strong and points heated, goodwill still prevails. It seems this is lost in
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Speaking of having strong opinions, Sara Smith caught the tail-end of Shane Claiborne’s talk at Asbury. She ran into him just after and asked him point-blank, “What do you think of the exclusivity of Christ?” He knew it is a deep and divisive topic. He took a step back and said that he did not think it was clear from the Bible—that is, what about the Hebrews in the Old Testament? He said judgment comes from Matthew 25, if we love our neighbor.
Sara said, “Why do you accept some words of Jesus, but not when He says, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one [Sara’s emphasis] comes to the Father except through me’?”
Claiborne answered, “it’s just not clear from the bible.”
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Eat Your Vegetables
I tell them that I, too, hated vegetables as a boy. I gave them my strategies: eat a bite, add the pork chop, swig of milk, gut it out.
I tell them about veggies being good for them. I tell them I want them to eat them, to be healthy, because I love them.
John says, "I wish you loved me less."
We all lose it.
With John, it's like this. First thing in the morning, he'll just launch into something. I was snuggling with him the next morning, after the veggie incident. He is not awake yet. Then, his little eyes pop open and he says, "When I was in Mommy's belly, there was a cord. She ate stuff and it went thru that cord. Why don't you have a cord for me and Joe and then you can eat the vegetables?"
Sunday, November 2, 2008
There's A Real Question at The End
I have hit the point where I recognize that I am going to have undo and then redo my seminary education. What happened is this: last night, I finished reading Shane Claiborne’s Jesus for President. I found, as has been brewing in my mind, that too much of my seminary education either leads to his conclusions or is the groundwork for his book, and I don’t like that.
I am appalled—no, that’s not right. I am… what? Frustrated? That my seminary education, Master of DIVINITY, for crying out loud, could be so contextualized.
Of course, some of you who know me well are thinking, “Well, Aaron, you are the very person who has been saying you don’t read much written after the fourth century. So you should not be surprised at this turn of events. It’s not Shane Claiborne’s fault. He’s just the guy who pushed you over the edge.” And that’s right. I respect his book and like a lot of it. It’s tropes are what bother me, too much to go into because they’re not the point.
I have been watching for a while, I guess. I sense that theologians understand their irrelevance. They do not drive discourse in ethics or philosophy the way they once did. In fact, theologians are derivative nowadays—they glom off the trends of secular academia. Feminism, queer theory, whatever is hot in academia will be hot in seminaries ten years later, complete with the rock star profs.
In 1989, I took a class at little ole Southern Miss, “Post-Modernism and Political Theory.” Even we were a little late getting to Foucault and Derrida, Habermas and Fish. So when I see religious books trying to explain post-modernism, I think back to some words spoken by a literary theorist to me in 1995, “Post-modernism has ceased to be instructive. We’re moving on.”
I went to Asbury. And really, what I am talking about here—a seminary education based on fads-- is the bigger problem at Asbury, not the cabal to oust Jeff Greenway and the faculty blood-letting that followed, or the cult of personality around former President Maxie Dunnam. It’s so Soviet at the seminary that about all you can hope for is that there will be a 20th Party Congress to denounce the excesses of the past, and some of the exiles can come home.
When I was in seminary, “Servant Leadership” was all the rage. The idea of servant leadership summed up all of ministry, theory and practice. Our core courses were “Servant as Liturgist” or “Servant as Liberator,” and other such high-sounding names. Now it seems to focus on “community.” No one knows what “community” is, but if you say the word, especially in a breathy way, and add the adjective “beloved,” everyone will swoon and attest to the truth of anything you say after that. In a year or two, there will be a new theme that sums up all of ministry and if your lay people will just drink the kool-aid, churches will grow and the kingdom will come.
So how can we resist? How do we undo and then redo? Part of the problem lies within academia and an academic model for seminaries. To make it in the academic world, you have to publish, and to publish you have to have something new to say. And the problem there is that when you are talking about orthodoxy, there is nothing new to say. Nothing. The prime value in seminary is on having something new, different. What if it is heretical? You’ll never know until many years later, perhaps not even in your lifetime. But there is so much insistence to jump on some new thing, some cool thing. Do you know where it leads? What it’s logical conclusions and/or practical outworkings are?
I suppose that many of you know that I do not hold on to things just cuz.
We have become prosperous and self-absorbed. When the ancient church speaks to us, we get edgy. We’ll take their mojo but not their substance. Candles and incense, cool. Fasting and study of doctrine, not so much. We think Third World Christians are on fire. Quaint, but on fire. If we could just get them over here, teach them some Form Criticism and get them to back off condemning abortion and homosexuality, we could harness their fire.
I don’t have anything more to say at least not that will make sense on this topic (and I have not made much of that here). So how do we rebuild our seminary, our theological, education?
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Joy and Pain
So, Friday night was a night Jesus was very happy about.
First, I married Robert Isaacs and Tina Wilson. They have been coming on Monday night, and have decided to commit their lives to Jesus. It was a small wedding in the chapel. I keep finding out that the folks from the neighborhood don’t have big weddings. They don’t have the big web of relationships that so many of us have. They don’t send out wedding invitations—it’s word of mouth and sometimes if the person you ask to ask so-and-so is feuding with so-and-so, there won’t be no invite!
A couple from the church who could not come sent some beautiful flowers.
Jessie and I had a good time meeting the families and eating cake. As everyone filed out after the reception, I was greeted with a handshake and a sly smile and the cryptic, “M.O.G.” I asked Michael Keaton what that was and he said that as they were talking, they decided to call me the “Man of God,” or “M.O.G.” I pray to live up to that.
Then the youth had a surprise party for Michael Mazariegos. The place was packed. Video games, Twister, general merriment. What a youth group: black, white, African, Hispanic. How is any of this happening? We don’t have any money. There’s nothing remarkable about us. We have nothing to offer in the way of the world. We just love Jesus. We want to know Him well and make Him well-known, as Becky Pippert says. It happens up and down the line. You really should come to our children’s ministry on Wednesday night. And the next Wednesday, hang with the youth. And the Wednesday after that, come to prayer meeting, in English, Spanish, Lingala, and French. And come on any Monday evening and see 100 people, brand new to the church.
This summer was hard. We had to root out some junk in the church. When we did, I kind of thought, “ok, we passed through that. Let’s move on.” I am ashamed to say that it took me awhile to realize that when you clear the paths, blessing comes.
But it’s not all joy today.
One boy, a boy on my heart, just lost it over nothing late last night. Freaked completely, and did his best to tear down everything good in his life.
And another girl, with a lot on her plate—her dad is in jail on her birthday.
It would be a lot easier to not care. To do something else. Being a pastor sucks. You’re in a fish bowl. There’s people in your own congregation who would love nothing more than to tear you down. They’ll go after your wife. And if they did not know that you would tear their lungs out, they’d hit your kids, too. And then, the devil is busy kicking all your little flock’s asses. So, sure, some days you think, “I’ll get a regular job. Home in the evening, on weekends. Come home, watch tv, hide out and don’t give a rip about what’s going on.” That’s the American Dream anyway. But you know why I can’t do that. There’s weddings and birthday parties!
If I can paraphrase Patton. I don’t want to change the world. It’s the devil who changed it. I just want to go back to when it was a cool garden and at the end of the day you waited to hear God’s footsteps, knowing He was coming for supper.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Funny Sweet Good Deep
Two very different boys. At the bookstore, John gets a dictionary, and now we sit down together and learn how to use it to look up words. I mean, this is what we have spent time doing this weekend.
Joseph chose a “Smart Lab” voice changer. So we sat down, put the wires together, went to the store to get a battery, and came back and made scary voices and alien voices. And Joe learned you can burp through it. Luckily, he did not take John’s suggestion about what to do next.
I noticed that on my prayer bench is a toy. Joe put it there for me. Makes sense—you have fun in prayer.
We had 110 tonight, so Bill was right—end of the month, cold day (freezing rain). Came down for grilled cheese and chicken noodle. Preached Wesley’s sermon, “Salvation By Faith.” Like I said before—preaching to the unchurched, to people burnt out on religion, or who have not been to church in forever—Wesley’s sermons are it. Just freshen it up and you’re in. Two came forward at the altar call. One guy still seeking Jesus, another young woman responding in faith for the first time.
They are definitely singing a lot more, with more enthusiasm. Barb does a good job playing loud early. Then they get the tune and she softens up and they can hear themselves.
Sunday School. We started Sunday School at the Rock. We hadn’t had much and we knew we needed a place for discipleship and small groups. We have over 50 in 7 classes, and we expect to need more classes. Wow, to think we thought we’d be happy with 3 classes and 10 in each class. Dream big. Better yet, let God send you what He wants.
In Sunday School this past weekend, we were studying the tabernacle. Rosanna said that if the tabernacle, all of the time and money they put into it, if it was meant to reconcile humans to God, shouldn’t our tabernacle be about that same task? We all just had to sit there and soak that in.