They All Have A Story

It has been a long time since I've been here. Our soccer season started and we just finished two weeks of pre-season practice. That means I pull double duty and rarely get to this site. Now that school has started I have my days back for the most part.

One of the things our team did this pre-season was go on a mission trip to Nashville. It mainly involved working at various inner-city ministries and we really enjoyed it. I have seen a lot worse poverty than we saw in Nashville but it still wasn't pretty.

One thing that captivated me was listening to the stories of the people we ministered to. One morning we were sent on an assignment to go find a homeless person to take to breakfast. They were all nice guys (yes, all men) though some were a little less sober than others. It was interesting to hear them tell about their families, especially their children. Yet from those homes they ended up on the street. It is agonizing to hear how the situations slowly developed.

I had supper with another guy at the rescue mission. He was from Jacksonville, FL on his way to visit his grandkids in Kentucky when his car broke down. It had taken him two weeks to get it fixed and in the mean time his money ran out and he ended up at the mission. He is a proud man who has served in the military and has a job back in Jacksonville. Fortunately he had everything fixed and was planning on leaving the next morning. A trip like that would not have been precarious for me but he ended up at the mission.

While eating supper with him a couple of young men, 20 years old maybe, were kind of acting up at a nearby table and had to be told to settle down by the mission staff. My dinner guest slowly shook his head and simply said, "They have a long way to go." It struck me as words of wisdom from an experienced traveler.

Getting Worse

Leaders who are looked up to constantly
who give out answers competently
who everyone assumes are living what they are saying
often have acute experiences of dissonance

“Who I am
and what people think I am
aren’t anywhere close
to being the same thing

The better I get as a rabbi
and the more my reputation grows
the more I feel like a fraud
I know so much more than I live

The longer I live
the more knowledge I acquire
the wider the gap between
what I know and what I live
I’m getting worse by the day…”

Found Poem - Eugene Peterson - Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places


I think there are at least two ways for a pastor to respond to this. On the one hand he can enter a spiral of depression and failure that lead to him either leaving the ministry or subsisting in it as a fraud. He will see himslef as a total failure and be unable to come to terms with the case built against him.

On the other hand, the more he learns of the gap between what he knows and how he lives the more he will understand grace and be all the better for it. He will truly be able to love others because he will begin to see them as God does and he will love himself for the same reason.

WWJD About Poverty

One of the more recent criticisms of North American Christianity, or at least the right wing version of it, has been that it has ignored many causes (justice, poverty) in favor of the pet causes (anti-gay, anti-abortion). While I agree that there is a level of truth to the accusation of imbalance I also get frustrated with what is perceived as the right way to help the poor.

The economic platforms of both the democratic and republican parties have deep histories that go far beyond our own country. Both have proven to successful at reducing poverty at various times in the past. (Both have had failures too.) Believe it or not there are some who favor republican policy not because they are rich and want to get richer but because they truly do believe that it will reduce poverty in the long run and it is therefore the kindest thing to do.

My main point of this post, however, is not to argue which is best but to point out the complexity of the whole thing. Having worked in development in Africa I have seen how complex the issues are. That's why, while I applaud people like Bono who are concerned about the impoverished, I am skeptical about their proposed solutions. (More aid, debt relief)

An excerpt from a LA Times article by Max Boot is interesting. "By any measure, the U.S. is extraordinarily generous, and President Bush is making us more generous still. He has already tripled development aid to Africa and plans to double it again. But for the anti-poverty campaigners it's not enough. It never is. Their animating idea is the same one that was behind Lyndon Johnson's Great Society: Massive transfers of wealth can eradicate poverty. It didn't work in the U.S., and it has even less chance of working abroad.

In the last 50 years, $2.3 trillion has been spent to help poor countries. Yet Africans' income and life expectancy have gone down, not up, during that period, while South Korea, Singapore and other Asian nations that received little if any assistance have moved from African-level poverty to European-level prosperity thanks to their superior economic policies.

Economists who have studied aid projects have found numerous reasons for the failures. In many instances, money was siphoned off by corrupt officials. Even when funds did reach the intended beneficiaries, the money often distorted local markets for goods and labor, creating inflation that drove local businesses out of business. Only one major research paper in recent years has found any positive correlation between foreign aid and economic growth, and that only in countries "with good fiscal, monetary and trade policies," which excludes much of Africa. Most experts think even that conclusion is too optimistic."

To be simplistic about the problem of poverty is easy. What we really need to do though is struggle with these questions and be willing to dig into the complexities of the problem. To be willing to do that is to be truly compassionate.

Participating in Worship

Over the summer we have tried to stress active participation in our worship gatherings. If you come to our gathering you will likely be asked to get up and do something rather than simply sing or listen. There are two contrasting views at work here and I'm not sure which is right.

On the one hand you have the view that people today are used to watching. They are used to going to theaters and concerts where they sit and watch something going on as silent observers. This view would hold that asking such people to be highly active participants is simply going to cause them to run and hide. After all, who wants to go somewhere where you might be noticed, or even worse, be the center of attention.

On the other hand we have those who say we now have what Erick Schonfeld calls a culture of participation. If you note things like wiki, flickr, blogs, etc. you see that people love being participants. They all feel they have something to contribute and they want to do so. To these folks going to a church that does not allow them full participation has no appeal. They are used to being able to participate.

My guess is that both views are valid even within the same individual. There are probably times when people feel like participating and other times when they feel like simply observing. Unfortunately most churches encourage the latter and make no room for the former. As a side note, creating worship environments with the potential for a high degree of participation takes a lot of work which may be the cause of its neglect.

The Ethic of Love

Andy Stanley's July 4, 2004 sermon (you can listen to it at their church website) has a thought provoking piece on tolerance. He says that an ethic of tolerance is being pushed in our society as something positive. According to this ethic we should be toleratant other religions, all political views, sexual orientations, theologies, philosophies, cultures, races, etc.

However Stanley believes that to accept tolerance is to accept defeat. If you and your wife agree to tolerate each other you have basically accepted defeat in your effort to make your marriage all that it could be. He says the biblical ethic is not tolerance but love. We are supposed to love people of other religions, all political views, sexual orientations, theologies, philosophies, cultures, races, etc.

Stanley's thought is challenging and changes the way I think about a lot of things. It makes sense in terms of living in a kingdom life here on earth.

Where Conversion Takes Place

Every now and then I am asked to fill out a survey sponsored by my denominations Youth Leadership Team. I never do because the survey is dripping of preconceived ideas and as I look at the questions I see that they often put me in a catch 22.

They ask how much of the budget is designated for youth. I'm not sure what they want here. We do have a line item for youth but that really doesn't tell the story. That amount would be about 1% of our total budget and I can just hear the rant that would generate. On the other hand we don't have a similar category for adults so by comparison the youth do pretty good. Of course being in a small church the majority of the budget goes into things like salaries, utilities, maintenance, etc. To get an accurate figure of how much we spend on youth you would have to figure what percentage of those numbers should be "billed" to youth. (They would get a high percentage of the building maintenance, that's for sure.)

The other thing we often hear from youth folks is that most people are saved before the age of 18 so that is where we should be putting our resources. That's a half truth because actually most people are saved before age 13 or 14. Teens don't accept Christ at a much higher rate than adults do and those that do tend to be shallow Christians according to Barna.

So, if most people are saved as children we ought to be putting our resources in children's ministry right? Actually most of the children who are saved do so in their homes led by their parents. All this seems to lead me to think that the important thing is to be a community of faith that helps ALL its members in their journey as a disciple.

One more thought about kids being saved in the home. It is interesting to note the child's "place" in the home before they accept Christ. They are loved just as much, allowed to participate just as much, they are not thought of as second class family members, they are cared for just as much, etc. I think the church can learn something here.