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 Man. A bud and I decided we were going to go into business together, mostly because we thought if we had our own business we could write off some bad-boy Dodge trucks (I was riding a bike at the time; I was desperate). We never did go for it (I sometimes regret it; I would have like to have tried), but we became intrigued by some business ideas we studied. There are a number of restaurant/food franchises available that cater to very small towns (we were in Mississippi, so that was only making sense), towns that did not and would not have a McDonald’s or any other restaurants. You could buy a series of franchises and be set up in a bunch of towns and make it work. Things like Broaster Chicken that you see in country stores, and stores here on the Northside where people walk.

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 Rosario. What kind of lunatic pushes a church to let go of the many people coming from far away (who because of distance and lack of commitment come only on Sunday) and instead focuses on a neighborhood of poor people, the very neighborhood churches left behind to move to the warehouses in the burbs?

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 United Methodist Church understand this? That there are more than enough poor and hungry and disabled and uneducated (stop me if this is sounding too much like the Acts of the Apostles or the early Methodists) to fill more churches than we can build?

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.

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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. Ica said that it was very sweet that I took the time to do that. I never gave it much thought, but it did make me remember all the small things my mom did to feed us, and it was always just there so I did not know what to say, not even thank you.

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 America.

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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.”

Eat Your Vegetables

So there's John and Joe, miserable. A plate of mixed veggies before them. Sure, there's taters and pork chops, too. But it's the corn, green beans and carrots killing them.

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?"

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 20^th 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?

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.

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.