When Church Lets You Down

Church can be pretty painful sometimes. I think back over my 17 years in ministry and my mind fills with memories of being yelled at, called names, having gossip spread about me. I think of bucking my head against pointless traditions and outmoded structures. I flinch at memories of being harangued by fundamentalists and lambasted by liberals. I painfully remember relational breakdown and conflict. I can easily recall the feelings of heartbreak at the apathy and/or selfishness of people who are part of the church. When I think back the last 17 years have been a litany of tough times and often walking upstream when it comes to working in the Church.

Despite experiencing all of this I am actually not that cynical about the Church. Ok I do carry what I think is a healthy dose of cynicism at times. But on the whole I don’t feel let down or betrayed by the Church. Often I sit down with young adults who have come to what they see is an earth shattering conclusion that the Church is flawed. They often feel that such a realization is almost tantamount to heresy. However such a response carries with it an assumption that Church is somehow meant to be perfect.

Perhaps this belief is fostered by the leadership of the Churches that these people come from. Often these people drop out of Church altogether seeing the errors of the Church as an inditement against faith itself. Others leave to start renewal or reactive movements of all shapes and sizes. However after a few years the realization (hopefully) dawns that the new movement carries its own flaws and history ends up repeating.

So if you feel cynical or hurt by Church that is fine, but we have to remember that nowhere does the bible promise us that the Church will be perfect. In fact the bible promises us that the Church and its leaders will be flawed and broken. Just look at the people of God in the Hebrew Scriptures. Moses brings down the Torah from Sinai and they have already descended into an infantile pagan worshipping rabble.

Through the arc of the Old Testament the people of God consistently act in a selfish, unjust and flawed manner. The prophets and monarchs fail and flounder, yet God through his grace maintains his relationship with his people. Despite Israel’s human failings he continues to partner with her, working towards good despite her shortcomings.

Look at the primary witness of the often lauded early Church the book of Acts. The story begins and almost straight away we have conflict between the Greek speaking and Hebraic Jews. We have that much quoted passage in Acts 4:32-37 in which the believers share their possessions. But before we can pause to marvel at this moment we have Ananias and Sapphira lining their prophets and acting like corrupt proto-tele evangelists.

The bible never give us a picture of a perfected Church. Sure their are moments in which the kingdom shines brightly in the actions and unity of the people of God, but the word offers us a wonderfully earthly and realistic image of the people of God. The overall theology of the Bible when it comes to the Church is that the Church is flawed because we as humans are flawed, the Church is simply a mirror of our own journey’s as disciples, reflecting our triumphs but also our failings.

The bible’s theology of the church most importantly points to Christ’s grace. We as individuals are recipients of God’s grace. So is the Church, God works with us despite our failings and errors. The history of the Church is a testament to God’s forgiveness, the mere fact that he continues to still want to partner with us is a witness to his absolute grace. The errors of the people of God remind us that we are not here to worship our Churches but instead we gather around worshipping God.

So it is ok to feel hurt by the Church, often you have good cause to. But before you pitch your brick into the stain glass windows of the Church, remember Jesus’ words about stones and sin. Maybe it’s time to forgive?

Evangelism in a Ralph Lauren World

Coffee and a Danish, my lunch with @PopeBenedict and thoughts on doing evangelism in a Ralph Lauren world.

Facebook Conquers the World

Seriously … at this point, who’s not on Facebook?

Grandmas are commenting on their teen grandkids’ angst-ridden status updates. One of your grade-school teachers wants you to join their mafia.

Candidates for the Planning and Zoning Commission have fan pages. So does actor Will Arnett’s voice. Not Will Arnett. Just his voice.

On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the site hit a half-billion active users.

That’s nearly five times as many people as watched this year’s Super Bowl — the most popular television broadcast ever — and about four times as many people as voted in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

People spend more than 700 billion minutes per month on the site and, according to Facebook, 400 million of them have logged in during the past month. Keep in mind there are only 309 million people in the United States — total.

So, seriously … who’s left?

Read Full article here

Three Traits of Gen Z

In 2010, Gen X, the group defined as having graduated high school around the turn of the millennium, might as well be considered over the hill. Likewise, Gen Yers are slowly growing up and out of their “teen” phase, paving the way for tweens to take the crown. Increasingly, pre-teens of today are becoming more savvy and in tune with behaviors and preferences normally reserved for teens.

So what is this generation — chronologically called by the name “Generation Z” — going to look like? Here are three predictions:

Den-Mark

Having a great time here in Denmark. Of course I made the obligatory pilgrimage to the grave of that wonderfully strange and prophetic Danish philosopher, theologian and Christian existentialist Soren Kierkegaard. Then last night we had an outdoor vertical self book launch/BBQ, in a ludicrously beautiful setting next to an old Church here in Copenhagen.

Today I caught the train out to Jutland where I am speaking for the next three days to around 600 young adults at the Summer Oasis camp. I am finding it fascinating learning from the experience of the Danish church which finds itself marginalised in a heavily secular culture. A culture which still wants to retain elements of cultural Christianity yet which does not want to engage with any active model of faith.

Grand Designs & Pop Music: Trying To Halt Time

I read over the last few days Simon Mawer’s acclaimed novel The Glass Room. The story is loosely based upon the famous Tugendhat house in Brno in the Czech republic. Mawer tells the story of Viktor Landauer, a young man with modern views living in the newly formed Czechoslovakia in the 1930′s. Viktor decides to build a house the is uncompromisingly modern, a building that will in effect wipe away the past and point to a new hope filled future. Viktor engages a renowned modernist architect and his dream is realised as a stunning, yet antiseptic home is created.

For a while the house is an oasis filled with jazz and contemporary attitudes. But the sleek lines of the building’s design cannot hold at bay the forces outside as Hitler’s Third Reich dismembers the Czech republic. Due to his Jewish heritage Viktor and his family are forced to flee. The house then is transformed into a Nazi laboratory, later as the Russians take over, the house then becomes a kind of museum  in which young communist children are brought in order to see what kind of ‘decadent lives the form capitalist owners lived’. By the end of the book as communism falls Viktor’s daughter now an older woman visits the house. It has been restored to its former glory, but it no longer seems modern, despite trying to spurn and cast off the past, the house still is filled with memories. It cannot exist as a modernist bubble resisting the march of time. Instead history and pain forces it way into it.

As I read the book, I thought of the great modern heresy of trying to stop time, of creating something which is new and vital. Our culture often claims to create something that in effect will wipe the slate of past clean. Pop music does this all the time. New bands that we must hear are foisted on us constantly, yet within in months are passed over as passe. When I was younger I felt the constant pressure to keep up, to be seen as being on the cutting edge. But as you get older, the way that you listen to music changes, songs no longer are listened to because they are new and hip.

Instead pop music becomes a container of memories. You will find yourself walking through the supermarket, an old song comes on and memories of youth come flooding back. The Go Betweens song Through the Streets of Your Town is like that for me. In 1988 I was not really into the band, or even really liked the song, but it was often on the radio, now when I hear that song, a whole world is reborn in my head. A song that at one time was the latest thing now becomes a time capsule. The modern myth is pierced and our culture’s inability to stop the constant metronome is time is exposed.

“Our days on earth are like a passing shadow, gone so soon without a trace.” 1 Chronicles 29:15

Mr Anti-Hyperreality

If Paris Hilton is the embodiment of Hyperreality in American popular culture, Harvey Pekar was surely the embodiment of reality, a man who stood against everything that contemporary celebrity culture demands, instead through his art standing up for ordinary, forgotten people who live in obscurity on the edge of our culture. That is why you have probably never heard of him unless you have managed to catch Paul Giamatti playing him in the film adaptation of American Splendour or seen youtube clips of him on David Letterman railing against NBC and their owner corporation General Electric. R.I.P Harvey Pekar, file clerk, cancer battler, ordinary joe,  comic book writer. For more about him click here.

Truth Labs

Well its been a while, but I have enjoyed my break from work and blogging. But it is good to be back online.

Just wanted to let you know about a great event here in Melbourne, with Ron Sider that is coming up. Long before social justice became a mainstream discussion point, Ron Sider was encouraging Evangelicals to be truly Biblical and take scriptures’ command to remember the poor seriously. You can check out info here.