Rod White's Blog, page 49

The ABCs of the E Word — Connect

I love imagining Jesus walking through Jericho and spotting Zacchaeus in the tree. Unlike the popular children's song, I don't think the Lord wagged his finger at him and told him to, "Get yourself out of that tree shorty!" I'm not even sure Jesus knew Zacchaeus, personally, yet. But the Lord apparently at least knew his name, because he calls to him and tells him he'll be at his house shortly!

So why did Zacchaeus immediately get down out of the tree and "receive him gladly" as it says? I suppose we'll have to ask him in the age to come to know for sure. For now, I imagine it was because Jesus connected with him. 

First, of course, Jesus showed up on the streets of Jericho; he didn't just connect virtually, like you and I are doing. More importantly, Jesus looked Zacchaeus in the eye and they connected, heart to heart. I think people could tell Jesus loved them just by looking at him — because he did. Jesus was out seeking the lost and he connected with a person who was ready to be found. 

The C of the ABCs of evangelism is Connect. 

Nate had a great time connecting a reporter the other day. Circle of Hope showed up in the county records because we are prospectively showing up on one of the crossroads of South Jersey when we take possession of that former firehouse. Here's what he said about the interview: 

I spent some significant time with a reporter…this morning. He frequently reads the law notices for the region, and found Pennsauken Twp's approval of the firehouse for a church last week.  He thought that was a story in and of itself and called me because he's convinced there's not another church out there that has ever reclaimed a firehouse…

He just kept saying, "You are so interesting! This is so awesome! I can't believe you exist!"  I described the ideas of reclamation, restoration, and redemption simply as us doing with a building what Jesus is doing in the world.  He couldn't get over how loving it was for a church to use what's there rather than build yet another building.  He couldn't believe that we'd plant something new rather than outgrowing the firehouse.  He was amazed at the lack of "programs" and the strategy for relating face to face.  His admitted cynicism about the church in general combined with his extensive knowledge of the region were very encouraging.  He assured me of what we have long suspected…that our particular location (on Marlton Pike by the 130 corridor) is perfectly situated for us to be and do what I described to him.  He wasn't interested in doing it…but he was interested in making us known.

I doubt that the reporter would have been so interested if Nate was not so interesting. More importantly, he wouldn't have cared so much if Nate had not cared about him. The reporter asked, "Is it OK if we talk about things that have nothing to do with my article?" A fifteen-minute interview turned into over an hour. 

To connect, we'll be going some places where people don't know us yet. More importantly, once we get there we will openly show whatever truth and love we are carrying and see who is interested. God was disconnected from his beloved creatures. He came as a person to reconnect — and to reconnect us. He walked through Jericho that day and made a person-to-person connection with Zacchaeus. That's elemental to evangelism. Just like Jesus, we have no lack of opportunity to connect; we run across people every day unless we are hiding out. It is mainly a matter of showing up in love and spotting the people who are up a tree. Sometimes they are stuck, sometimes they are looking for someone; we need to keep the love in our hearts in our eyes so when they see us they connect with who they need.

First step – Go to some "lane" where people don't know you so well. In our region, that should not be too hard, since there are about six million people nearby. Be there to connect in some way. It is OK to talk to people who are waiting in line with you for coffee. You can go to a block party and introduce yourself to everyone who is there. You can ask someone, "How's it going?" when you are at the park and mean it. This will take some courage, so take the…

Preliminary step – Connect with God from your own perch up some tree so you have something of the Spirit that can be noticed.  Don't worry that whatever small love you share with the Lord will be too small or uninformed.  Just let people connect with whatever faith you've got. Someone is likely to receive it gladly. I received it gladly when someone showed up and we connected.

The ABCs of the E Word — Blab

The following catchy phrase is attributed to a very famous evangelist, Francis of Assisi: "Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary."

Well, he didn't really say that, as far as we know. It sure sounds like him, however. He did say this in his Rule of 1221 when he told the brothers not to preach without permission: "Let all the brothers, however, preach by their deeds."

So OK, Francis was misquoted. I suppose that means Jesus was misquoted and now we are lost in some postmodern morass of meaninglessness where words have been emptied of their meaning altogether. Spare me.

It is easy to point out the inexactitude of data from the past. You can also count the typos in this brief essay. While we're at it, many of you are probably reading this rather than doing your data processing job, so you know, personally, that data from the present is probably faulty, too. But you cannot doubt that Jesus, Paul, the prophets and Francis of Assisi relied on words, whether someone recorded them with absolute accuracy or not. They were blabbers. And I don't mean that in a bad way. The B of the ABCs of evangelism is blab.

The evangelicals who dominate a lot of the religious airwaves in this country with endless preaching would be ashamed of me for saying Jesus "blabs." (But they should at least congratulate me for going a..b..c.. about something). As far as a lot of believers are concerned, Jesus found various natural pulpits, like on a "mount," and held forth like a good preacher — and we have only improved on his style by moving things in out of the weather. In a reaction to a lot of believers (particularly the pharisaical evangelicals people love to skewer on sitcoms), many people, Christian and otherwise, would like to pretend "holding forth" is about dead — even though, as someone said (probably misquoted here), "the Good News can no more be communicated by deeds than can the nightly news."

It is a message. We need to blab. Francis modeled his life on Jesus. But it wasn't just about the Lord's life of poverty, it was mostly about His life of preaching. Jesus blabbed. We have no instance of Jesus performing a miracle and not speaking a word of comfort or challenge afterwards. Paul articulated succinctly what Francis and Jesus felt in their souls: "How are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?" (Rom. 10:14).

To be sure, words used cheaply, thoughtlessly are worse than no words at all. Marilyn McEntyre  says, "In an environment permeated with large-scale, well-funded deceptions, the business of telling the truth, and caring for the words we need for that purpose, is more challenging than ever before."

I say B is for Blab because blabbing puts the idea of preaching back where it belongs: out of a "pulpit" and into normal conversation. We normal people can blab. Let the experts "preach," there is room for them, too. But most of us are on a cell phone all day, not in a pulpit (and Circle of Hope doesn't even HAVE a pulpit). We can even reduce our blab to a txt. We need to say a lot of things about Jesus.

So here is my exhortation.

1)     Talk about Jesus like you talk about your intimates. Maybe you don't gossip as much as I do. But I often tell stories about my friends and family. They do great, interesting, moving things. I love them. They teach me things. I tell stories about them. Jesus fits into their circle quite naturally. Jesus is a very close friend of mine.

2)     Get over the idea that you are bringing up the "topic" of religion. Jesus is not a topic. He is not an ideology any more than you are. There is no clearer way for God to make it clear God is personal than to be revealed in Jesus. Talk about first things first: who Jesus is and who is he to you. Megan brought this up in her comment to my previous post. People are usually fine with what you think and feel; most of them are probably interested to meet an actual Christian who is not in a book or on TV.

3)     Also get over the idea that we are not supposed to be serious and intimate until we are having sex. When words began to be suspiciously meaningless to philosophers, the trickle-down effect was to make conversation perpetually "light" — as if when you revealed feelings or thoughts you were invading someone else's privacy, or you were being intolerant. "Nice" people end up deferring all day to the audacious people who don't understand this rule of "niceness." Be yourself in Christ and say what you feel. Why should people be deprived of you? Why should your heart be an ungiven gift?  

4)     Until you get used to blabbing good news, why don't you come up with the "story of the week" and see how many times you can bring it up? We are always finding interesting things to post on Facebook or to tweet. Why not let your actual face have something to offer? I'm talking about your own story of faith, what you learned, what you experienced in a meeting, what happened in prayer – blab it. Or re-tell what you heard someone else talk about – their struggle, their joy, their interesting take on applying their faith. Obviously communication from the world will try to steer you toward talking about Chevys or the President's birth certificate or the best chai. That's all fine, but why should Jesus be excluded? Practice not excluding him.

Evangelism is all about blab. It is what normal followers do.

The ABCs of the E Word — Ask

I am going to take a few days to see how many  people I can engage in thinking about evangelism with me – yes, that's the E word.. The subject is really "a beggar telling another beggar where she got the bread." But in this day of marketing and proliferation of media charlatans who have poisoned the idea of evangelism, it has become very difficult to talk about the E word, or, for most Christians, to even think about it.

The word "evangelism" does not occur in the Bible. The word "evangelist" occurs three times, once when Paul is exhorting his disciple, Timothy to take himself seriously: "As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully." 2 Timothy 4:5. The root idea of the word evangelist is to be a "good newser." "Evangelism" comes from a word in Greek rooted in the idea of a "good message." The word "gospel" in English is just the same; the word comes from Old English "good" plus "spel" or story, message, word. Early on, the association with God changed the association with "good" to "God's" word.

Christians have a good story to tell — the one about the life and work of Jesus, the ones about our ancestors in the faith, and our own stories about how we are living, Spirit to spirit, with God — through Jesus and like our ancestors. People tend to make evangelism very complicated, as if they were in charge of what God does and as if they need to be an expert in everything biblical and metaphysical before they open their mouths. I think it has got to be simpler than that, or none of us could do it. And I think, if you are a follower of Jesus, Paul's admonition to Timothy basically applies to you, too: "Be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully." We've got the call and God supplies the capacity.

The work of evangelist includes asking.

Last night at Haddon and Fern I was trying to get people to see how they ARE the invitation, much more than they are merely asking people to come to meetings or asking them to do things. The Gospels in the Bible (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) are stories about who Jesus is and what he does. They are not sales pitches for a product or comparative religion classes. They are telling about who Jesus is and about what happened when he showed up.

The A of evangelism first requires, showing up and being who we are in Christ. The love and truth we bring when we enter the room or enter a relationship is an "ask" in itself. Everyone is a story waiting to be told. Our story centers on Jesus. When we are ourselves in Christ, we are a good "ask." So often we try to do evangelism right and we lose the most winsome thing we can do, which is tell our own story to someone who is interested in knowing us. Our story is a question in itself. When we tell it, it asks itself.

Some of us will be more aggressive because that is who we are. To be an evangelist is one way the Holy Spirit gifts people. Timothy was probably a gifted evangelist. But everyone who has received the Holy Spirit has some evangelist in them. If we are repressing the spiritual desire to ask people to listen, to come and see, to open up to the truth and love we have received, we are thwarting our true selves. I also think we are missing out on the adventure of being involved in what God is doing.

God, in Jesus, is certainly asking us to come back into love and truth. When we follow him in that, the process is not without its pain, no less than it was for Jesus  – some of us are pained when we ask someone to go out to dinner with us for fear we might be told "No," after all! But the asking is so generative! Simply showing up with Jesus, simply asking, "What do you think about my faith?" could unleash new life. How do we know what God is going to do? How can we know if we don't ask?

A Psalm — for Courage

I wrote a small psalm to share with the main mother in my life and she thought I should share it with you. I have been admiring the film-makers who are the prophets of the unbelieving world, these days. They are no more heeded than God's own spokespeople. But the call remains.

Lord, save us from the liars

And from our own lies.

The ice cap is still melting,

But we did kill Osama bin Laden.

There were no WMDs in Iraq,

But we do know that Obama is Hawaiian.

The perps of the money melt down still reign,

But we are now friends with Duchess Kate.

Forgive us as we calculate

How much it costs

to tell the truth.

Each keystroke hurts;

Each small look a threat

Of crass resistance.

The iciness is growing,

So we kill our terror with quiet.

New enemies rummage around in us,

So we deftly adapt reality.

The audacious win the power,

So we turn our minds to drivel.

Forgive us as we obsfucate

How much it costs

To live in truth –

Each threat of conflict,

Each painful question

A reason to live a lie.

You have caused yourself endless trouble

Being and telling truth.

You have caused us endless trouble

Following and discerning.

We lack your courage.

Speak it into being.

The Perils of Telling the Truth

I want to add to my stories about good, faithful women, today. 

This is a story about someone I know well, but I am not going to use her name. You don't need to know to get the point. It is a story that needs to be told in several different ways and for different purposes. For today's purpose, it is about truth-telling. 

To begin with, Jesus is the truth. Whatever truth we aspire to know is summed up and disseminated by God-with-us, the Savior risen. Therefore, truth takes spiritual discernment. It is not factless, but the facts cannot present the truth unless the truth is related to God and is therefore concerned with love. My friend has had a difficult year trying to teach truth and tell it. She has been attacked by loveless truth purporting to be fact but without discernment. 

She had a hellish year, actually, at the hands of ruthless colleagues and a feckless administration at the university. Years ago, she became the chair of her department when it was falling apart. She not only righted the ship, she created one of the most effective departments on campus and was regularly told so. She became respected and chaired faculty committees. She had a vision for student development and designed a curriculum to reflect Christian principles, coming up with something of a training model that was a unique combination of science and faith. 

In April of 2010 my friend came home from a trip to a funeral to find that two of her colleagues had engineered a "coup" of sorts, presenting a plan for the reorganization of the curriculum that purportedly conformed to "best practices." They justified lowering the level of training to one they could teach by suggesting that one lagging criteria of eight in test scores from a practice test given to a group of students required their revamping. Their plan amounted to truth without discernment, discernment being the hallmark of my friend's approach. What's worse, they would not talk about their reasons, their process or the now-broken trust they caused. They would only have conversation in group under carefully scripted, circumstances. The dean was brought in to mediate and my friend was subjected to a barrage of projection and invective that she had never experienced in her whole life. The conflict never went through any personal process like Matthew 18 insists; it went directly to character assassination and tribunal. So the supposed truth was accompanied by no love. 

It was worse than loveless, it was abusive. As chair of the department, there was reason for the leadership of the university to exercise some camaraderie, at least. Instead they promised and fiddled and left her hung out to dry. They not only wasted the results of her talents and devotion, they diminished all her work in a department that was one of the most successful on campus (and profitable!). At one point the provost brought in a professional mediator, with whom the rebels refused to meet except under choreographed circumstances. The mediator let them dominate the hour and afterwards actually suggested my friend leave the university rather than think the situation would ever resolve. The mediator later suggested she bring cookies to a future meeting, something like Beaver's mother solving a sitcom crisis. 

What might have solved my friend's problem would have been not telling the truth in the first place. She had created a program that was serious about people and demanded serious professors to train students. The professors did not want to do the personal work; they diminished the program down to the little they were willing and able to do and called it "best practices." Unfortunately, we need people to be trained by a good program; we need Christians who can deal in truth. 

What's more, my friend could have fought fire with fire. Instead of fighting for the chair role, she resigned in a show of humility. Instead of putting letters of protest in the files of her colleagues, or filing a lawsuit, she allowed for reconciliation to happen. Instead of organizing her appalled friends into a league supporters, she relied on the institution to follow its rules and protect its standards. She could (and still could) tell her story and let the truth stand. Instead, she has gone through an excruciating process of figuring out how to speak the truth in love while having no partners with which to do it. 

In all my days as a participant in the church I have never seen such an overt expression of wicked behavior. My friend got no regard from people she thought were her friends — people she had housed in her home, travelled with, for whom she had fought for promotions and raises, and had provided for in so many ways. I have rarely seen a leadership so befuddled and limp that they were afraid to tell the truth about their own stated vision and standards and just left a valuable leader to fend for themselves. Granted, my friend was not an experienced or even willing political player; she didn't want to be an infighter and that got her eliminated through her own audacious trust. But one would hope that there are still shepherds around who know the truth and tell it. Unfortunately it is often like Isaiah 56:10 His watchmen are all blind, they are all ignorant: dumb dogs not able to bark, seeing vain things, sleeping and loving dreams. 

My friend is hurting, but she will be fine. She trusts God. She knows the truth and Jesus knows her. But will the truth be OK? Ruthless people wield pseudo-science around without discernment and ruin our schools. People who do not receive discernment from their spiritual directors and wise leaders are let loose in a so-called democratic atmosphere to steal and destroy. It is a very old story, but these days it is objectified by science and depersonalized by the spirit of self-actualization and tolerance. 

I can't solve this big mess of a problem by describing it. But I can continue to protest to whoever will listen. We need to do the best we can to tell the truth. If you are a leader you are required to have the courage to tell the truth for Jesus' sake, as best you can. You'll need to risk the conflict and not just ride out the problem until it settles at the lowest common denominator. 

All of us, if we have a dream or we have a problem, we need to tell the truth. That means we'll have to understand where our dreams and problems come from, and understand how we impact others. We'll need to have a purpose for the common good, not just our own, when we go for fulfillment and solution. Our truth will have to include love like the Lord's. 

Most difficult of all, when I am a victim of bad science and worse leadership like my friends has been, I will have to suffer for telling the truth. Discernment is not rewarded in public anymore. It is all politics of the least relational kind. 

Don't let go. We will be accused of grandiosity, but let's follow Paul's exhortation:  Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, "children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation." Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. Philippians 2:14-16

Kristen and the Sword of Wendell Berry

I have been meaning to tell this little story of Kristen for some time. The Monday after resurrection Sunday seems like a good time to tell it. Our good feeling of new life is going to meet up with our schedules. The resolve we honed with our Lent disciplines is going to meet up with opposition. The week after Easter can be such a let-down because we get tested and we don't meet the test as well as we would like. So I thought I would offer you a story about how Kristen got tested met the test. I think of her up on her soap box quite often, making herself heard among the big loud men speaking for the empire. I appreciate her example, because I also need the courage to open my mouth and speak my heart. I am also confronted with a world that desperately needs what has been lavished on me in Jesus.

She was doing a summer internship last summer at a farm in Massachusetts. It was some, wonderful organic farm that invites the kids up to do some work, get themselves dirty and get reconverted to humanity. One of the farm's outlets for their produce was the farmer's market in a village nearby. Kristen went along to help sell the kale and whatnot.

It happened that the village had a good Massachusetts tradition of having a "speaker's corner." When there was a farmer's market, they set up a place where people could exercise their right of free speech. Since it was near the Fourth of July, speakers were feeling especially patriotic and quite a few people were getting up to say something. The rhetoric was tending to lean Tea Partyish.

One man got up and read a familiar paragraph: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. — That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it…"

He thought that the government was doing a relatively admirable job of securing our rights with its various wars. He exhorted the crowd to support the troops. Kristin was not having it. She had been reading Wendell Berry. She was about ready to join Shalom House for a couple of years (at least). So she decided to get up on the soapbox and speak back with poetry. She whipped out the sword of Wendell Berry and said: 

The year begins with war.

Our bombs fall day and night,

Hour after hour, by death

Abroad appeasing wrath,

Folly, and greed at home.

Upon our giddy tower

We'd oversway the world.

Our hate comes down to kill

Those whom we do not see,

For we have given up

Our sight to those in power

And to machines, and now

Are blind to all the world.

This is a nation where

No lovely thing can last.

We trample, gouge, and blast;

The people leave the land;

The land flows to the sea.

Fine men and women die,

The fine old houses fall,

The fine old trees come down:

Highway and shopping mall

Still guarantee the right

And liberty to be

A peaceful murderer,

A murderous worshipper,

A slender glutton, Forgiving

No enemy, forgiven

By none, we live the death

Of liberty, become

What we have feared to be. — 1991 – I

Her new friends at the farm we a bit concerned. Not only were these people the prospective buyers of farm-fresh organic tomatoes, they later told her that they were not entirely convinced that the villagers would not do her harm if she kept reading her poetry. But sometimes when Kristen gets going she needs to complete her thoughts. So she kept going and closed with this: 

 Now you know the worst

 we humans have to know

 about ourselves, and I am sorry,

 for I know you will be afraid.

 To those of our bodies given

 without pity to be burned, I know

 there is no answer

 but loving one another

 even our enemies, and this is hard.

 But remember:

 when a man of war becomes a man of peace,

 he gives a light, divine

 though it is also human.

 When a man of peace is killed

 by a man of war, he gives a light.

 You do not have to walk in darkness.

 If you have the courage for love,

 you may walk in light. It will be

 the light of those who have suffered

 for peace. It will be

 your light. 

1995 – V To my granddaughters who visited the Holocaust Museum on the day of the burial of Yitzak Rabin, November 6th 1995.

Thank God for people with the courage to share their heart for peace! Jesus died on the cross for reconciliation with God and others. Jesus pointedly did not raise and army to achieve his ends. Jesus rose again and continues to rise in people who have the courage to be the light. The light comes from being at peace with God. But peace with God that does not make peace on earth doesn't really have much to get up on the box and say, does it? Let's meet our tests this week with audacity and hope.

I Know You Don't Care, Ayn, but She Died from No Healthcare

I heard about a memorial service the other day for an old friend's sister. She was a home healthcare nurse without medical insurance. She knew she had something wrong with her, but she kept putting off going to the doctor because she was afraid – afraid of what might be wrong with her and afraid she couldn't pay for any treatment. When she finally couldn't stand the pain and uncertainty, she went to the doctor. But it was too late, the cancerous tumor had burst and she died within weeks.

I think this woman had other choices than the ones she made. And I am sure there were personal reasons for her behavior which I do not understand. But the fact that someone could not afford health care and died as a result makes me want to speak to the powers in the small way I have at hand today – this blog post.

I am feeling the prophet Isaiah on the subject:

Woe to those who make unjust laws,

   to those who issue oppressive decrees,

to deprive the poor of their rights

   and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,

making widows their prey

   and robbing the fatherless.

What will you do on the day of reckoning,

   when disaster comes from afar?

To whom will you run for help?

   Where will you leave your riches? (Isaiah 10:1-3)

The legislators in congress, who, for the most part, equal "the rich," have made choices and are on the verge of making more radical choices that have an impact on us all, especially the poor.

It is reported that Congressman Paul Ryan makes every member of his staff read philosopher Ayn Rand, the shameless promoter of the gospel of aggressive self-interest. His new budget proposal reflects this.

 

Jim Wallis says, "Congressman Ryan's budget isn't really about deficit reduction. It's about choices — choices that will determine what kind of a country we become. And Paul Ryan has made the choice to hurt people who don't have the political clout to defend themselves. Two-thirds of the long-term budget cuts that Ryan proposed are directed at modest and low-income people, as well as the poorest of the poor at home and abroad. At the same time, he proposed tax cuts up to 30 percent for some of our country's wealthiest corporations."

While cutting into our country's modest attempt at providing a social safety net, people who call themselves "deficit hawks"  completely ignore the most consistently wasteful, and morally compromised area of the whole federal budget — our endless and unaccountable military spending.

Isaiah says:

"Doom to you who legislate evil, who make laws that make victims — laws that make misery for the poor, that rob my destitute people of dignity, exploiting defenseless widows, taking advantage of homeless children. What will you have to say on Judgment Day, when Doomsday arrives out of the blue? Who will you get to help you? What good will your money do you?"  (Isaiah 10:1-3, The Message)

Ryan's budget is a bonanza for the rich and devastation for the poor. That's a fact. It is frightening that the main rationale for the cuts is about the so-called immorality of deficit spending, instead of about the choices the officials are making about what kind of country we are becoming. Further impoverishing the poor in order to add more wealth to the wealthy is not an acceptable political or moral strategy.

When President Obama offered his budget he said, "In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of all working Americans actually declined. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each. That's who needs to pay less taxes? They want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that's paid for by asking 33 seniors each to pay $6,000 more in health costs. That's not right. And it's not going to happen as long as I'm president."

But what Obama failed to say was that we are currently wasting lives and billions of dollars in Afghanistan on a strategy that fails to make us any safer, which is its stated justification. And he should mention the billions being spent on Iraq, Libya and untold expenditures in trying to police the world. For instance, the U.S. has 3,500 troops in Djibouti, 53,000 in Germany, and 8,000 in Qatar.

Last night we had a congressman in our meeting (a first, I think). He seemed like a nice man. I managed to open up the Israeli-Palestinian mess as part of our closing prayer. He started talking to me about it as soon as I shook his hand. He immediately embroiled us the intricacies of visionless statecraft. The whole congress seems to be tied up with Randian, self-interested competition, which results in a predictable, endless conflict over protecting wealth and getting more. Where are the wise people? I told him I needed to leave the government to him while I tried to serve Jesus. Mostly, I mean that. But when someone dies because they can't afford healthcare, because they have been made afraid to go to the hospital, I think we all need to put on some Isaiah.

[On a related note: join us this Friday for the Good Friday vigil outside of Delia's gun shop, 4pm]

The Art of Retreat

I'm energized by the Men's Retreat. Just getting over 90 men in one place at one time, focused as best they can focus on the Lord — either it will wear you out or get you going! It got me going. I came away with many good memories and an admonition — "Let's go ahead and change, Rod." There are changes to be made.

I think changing may be the art of retreat. We need to go, get out, be away in order to stay, go forward, be present. Making that intentional change of pace for a weekend often breeds unexpected development. I think I am having that experience right now.

Our small group, motley crew that it was, symbolized the art of retreat with some retreat art. Obviously, when you look at the picture, you have to think, "I guess you had to be there." True.

Our master's-piece mostly derived from the camp's giant compost pile. Our inital idea was to raise up some fallen nature in praise (or something like that). But men like to build things; so it sort of got a life of it's own until it provided enough interior space for something that ended up looking like an altar in the heart of it. We ended up with the bright idea to dare ourselves to circle the altar without destroying the structure — which we accomplished. It was spontaneous praise of bowed-down men on a journey through the heart of fallen creation raised up in worship. I'm not kidding — at least that is what I was doing.

My symbolic journey has turned out to be a surprisingly abiding memory. (And I can't forget Brian Dwyer lithely moving through it at comparatively breakneck speed, either). It is a good motivation for change. the whole weekend was like that — I had to get to the retreat place. I had to get in the group. I had to fall down a couple of times extracting limbs. I had to negotiate the vision. I had to shamelessly move around the altar like Samuel raising his Ebenezer.

Wonderful.

Today I am circling the altar in my heart and in my day. I have some more wilderness alive in me where Jesus is travelling with me.

Lent, the Teen Whisperer, and Skins

Last night the room was dark and smoky. Candace took a journey around the room with a censer and spoke out laments and promises based on the prophet Micah. The wall had grown with another floor-to-ceiling abstract painting. Looking at it all a day later, I have to wonder, "How weird is that?"

It seemed like people were into it. But given the typical attention-span of most of us, it will probably take an uninitiated person about five years to understand what is going on during the season of Lent. I hope they stick around that long. A lot is going on. Right now we are getting to the home stretch, moving toward April 24 and the resurrection.

Lent goes against about everything that's going down these days, which is the main reason I like it. But it is not going to get popular any time soon.

Although — Lent is, apparently, getting more popular with evangelicals. Many of the people of Circle of Hope are from that fold. I never really drank the evangelical kool-aid, so sometimes I don't understand how big a leap some people are taking to use the discipline of Lent. They suspect anything that is Catholic and feel obligated to argue about orthodoxy. (Someone came through the door last night, smelled smoke, and asked, "Are we having a BBQ? I thought we were Protestants.")

But uncomfortable Christians from the subculture don't make me nearly as concerned as teen-agers from the culture at large, when it comes to Lent. Increasingly, Christians are even more uncool than ever, and the notion of discipline, in general, and ancient things, in particular, are not likely to be the next fad. I don't want Lent to be a fad. But I don't want people to miss it.

Tina Wells has me thinking about teens and Lent, which is probably why I'm thinking, "How weird is that?" She knows all about what teens think is cool and uncool. So she hates "Gossip Girl" because it is all about the market perpetuating stereotypes without even asking their audience. People call her the "teen whisperer" because she can speak a fifteen-year-old's language even though she is older now. She's been a marketing guru since she was a teen herself. Now she's working on becoming Camden County's Oprah. She doesn't really like MTV's controversial "Skins" (another rip-off from British TV) but she relates to it. On Joy Behar she said, "I was haunted by the decisions they were making, but it's realistic…I think it's the reality that's making people so scared of the show."

I am not scared of "Skins" (I have about ten episodes on my DVR right now and nothing is malfunctioning!). But I think it might point out how weird Christians are becoming. If a teen's church is doing Lent, she might be uncomfortable that it is weird Christianity. But her secret discomfort might really be that she is more like "Skins" than Christian. That reality unnerves Tina Wells, and it unnerves me. But I want to be more like Tina and wade in to keep learning the language of the culture emerging around me. If you are speaking it better than I am, I want to get to know you.

One of the reasons I like the spiritual discipline of Lent so much, is because it is so Christian. It is unabashedly speaking the language of reconciliation with God. A person who is a nonbeliever often gets Lent better than the Christians who suspect it. The unbeliever doesn't know any "better," so they can either do it or not. So many believers are modestly doing Lent while pondering whether they want to do "Skins" or not. Either way, Lent gets the subject out of one's head, however distantly it might be there, and into a smoky, weird room, in which they'll be invited to share the body and blood, and be invited into the possibilities of knowing God and their true selves.

Promises about Machines, Data, Precedent

I went to a meeting in Lancaster Co. the other day. It meant a long car ride with stimulating comrades. The meeting came with hugs, affirmation and encouragement from good-hearted people trying to do good things. AND it gave me nine hours to meditate and cogitate. I want to share some results.

The results are promises. Maybe you will want to make some promises, too, after you meditate and cogitate with me. I am not even going to mention the meeting I went to, because what I say might sound personally critical, which I don't need to be in a blog post!! I have no general aspersion to cast, so don't go there. But the general impact of the meeting on me was to be warned of three temptations we are facing. I am feeling the Ephesians 6 battle today. It has caused me to remember my first love. So I am constrained to do what I did when I first faced the need to practice fidelity to my wife, I made a promise. I think we have promises to make to one another before the Lord these days.

If we are going to "do everything and stand," I think these are among the things we need to say to the Lord, to ourselves, to each other and to the powers.

I will stay as human as humanly possible.

We will not bend the knee to what we have created to amplify our capacity.

The temptation: I have been to a few worship times, now, in which the worship leader is a small person made huge on a screen. The screen is the mediator of the worship in words and pictures. This past weekend I had the bizarre experience of the speaker playing a video of himself and turning to watch himself give a speech instead of just talking to the 3-400 people who were in the room! Christians need to rage against the machine, at least we should use them consciously and not just conform to the technology available just because it is available.  At least we could not create a culture for people who give us charge of their souls in which those unsuspecting people are lured into further complicity with the godless technology powers.

If I want to know the truth about you, I will ask you.

We will not bend our knee to data.

The temptation: I was listening to a presentation about a group in which I am deeply involved. The speaker was talking about our financial health and presenting different charts and conclusions about our downward-trending patterns. I was tracking with the presentation until he got to the point where he said, 'We don't know why the contributions are less." The data was inconclusive. I thought to myself, "Wait a minute!!" If all the staff picked up the phone and made twelve phone calls a week, they could ask everyone personally and have a conclusion about why the giving was down in a month! Data makes our love lazy; as Facebook amply demonstrates, it makes our community illusional. I think the powers want Jesus himself to be seen as just another collection of data and want his people to mediate their relationships with sociological analysis.

I will make history with you.

We will not bend the knee to precedent.

The temptation: I am connected to two organizations which had interesting opportunities to be inclusive in their meetings last weekend and almost made it. But they were thwarted by their own history. Each has a strong, Central Pennsylvania sense of being "us." When they talk about their somewhat new, multicultural, multiethnic nature, they talk about how "we" are becoming diverse. I usually feel like I am one of the people who has added the diversity, since I am from the outerland of Philadelphia (but still the cradle of democracy) and have all the elements of otherness: bits of Native American ancestry, sprinklings of radical politics, and, the main thing, no family connection to insiders from Central PA. Of all the people in the world, Christians, who have been born again into a new family in Jesus, should be very adaptable when it comes to being unattached to our history. The people who made us who we are would be proud if we made who's coming next who they are. I know Jesus is sending forth His Spirit to meet the unbelievers of the megalopolis pushing their way into Lititz.

As you think and pray with me, what comes to mind as the temptations the powers are throwing in your way? Thinking bigger, what do they throw in our way, as a people? As we incarnate Jesus, speak the truth in love and keep our eyes on giving the best we have to offer to our era, we have great opportunity to live out of our true selves in Jesus. I am encouraged all over again, just thinking about the possibilities that could be realized by keeping our promises.