hypersync

"We shouldn't reconstruct the Christian faith into an advancement of the American way of life, which I feel is the great sin of the American church today." -Gordon Fee (Professor Emeritus, Regent College, Vancouver) [source]

I remember listening to Gordon Fee during a Chi Alpha Fellowship retreat years ago when I was working in campus ministry.  Frankly, I don't remember anything he said, but we all liked his book.

This quote is very timely.  I concur with Fee concerning the idea that the American church of both the religious right and the religious left has allowed itself (themselves) to be co-opted by American socio-political systems and agendas. This has produced an institutional church that to the general public, particularly among younger generations, looks more like the crass American political system rather than the "love your neighbor as yourself" ideal of Christianity - at least as Jesus summed up in his two great commandments.  This has also produced a deficient Christian experience in this country among too many adherents.

We cease to be the imago Dei (the image of God) within our surrounding society when we allow ourselves to be so diminished and corrupted.  We experience a deficient form of the life in Christ when we do so.  The question may well be:

When are we, individually and in the aggregate, going to reclaim the relational experience promised by the texts of the Christian faith so that we are re-formed in humility into to the imago Dei in order to be a compelling witness of an alternative for the people we encounter everyday?

Isn't it true that Christians are supposed to seek truth?  That means that seeking truth must be independent of what makes us feel good, or makes us feel secure, or superior, or valued, or respected, or accepted, or included, or anything else, frankly.  If we seek truth, truth must rule the day, else our lives are a lie.

I was thinking about a good friend from college who played an important part of my life during the latter part of those days.  I haven't seen or heard from him for nearly 20 years.  Why? A variety of reasons, I suspect, but that is a fact regardless of why.  Time passes and the general, the mundane, and the profound aspects of life intrude.

I decided to google him this morning just to see if anything came up, and it did.  I listened to a radio interview he did last year about his current career and creative activities.  It was so funny hearing his voice, as if no time has passed.  Yet, so much time and so many changes of life and attitude and perspective.  What can be said?  Nothing really - actually so much if given time.

Looking back over the years of friendships and relationships and acquaintances, of events and activities and and jobs and goals, I wonder from time-to-time what could have been if different decisions were made a strategic points in my life.  My life could have gone in so many different directions, and I have done so many different things.  There was no real plan.  Opportunities presented themselves and at times I fell into them and other times I pursued them.  I am a reluctant cleric.  I've been a bus driver, a graphic designer, a desktop publisher, a network systems director, a data analyst, a teacher, a campus pastor, a missionary, a technology geek, a oil change technician, a college instructor, a student leadership development specialist, a student three times, and coming full-circle now a missioner.

Back in Bowling Green, after my bachelors degree, I took a year of graphic design and photography in a program similiar to the primary course of the old Bauhaus.  I loved it and was quite surprised that I actually had talent.  But, just one year and I moved on to Kent.  What if I continued in design and photography, which is now my hobby.  What if I allowed my creative side to develop rather than allow myself to be taken into fields where logic ruled?  I don't know, but here I am after all that time and all those experiences.

With people, too, how might things have been different.  What might have been if my friend and I kept in contact and maintained our friendship?  I have little contact with people from my past, and that is primarily my fault.  I am terrible at keeping up past relationships.  It isn't that I forget about them, as is evident in my googling this past friend, but I just don't make the phone call, write the letter or e-mail because life intrudes and the immediate cries out and I heed the call.

Sometimes, I really do wish things would have been different.  I'm in one of those times right now.  Why?  I don't know, but I am.  It isn't that life is bad right now, because it certainly isn't.  I have right now the opportunity to do what I've always wanted to do, but the problem is knowing exactly what I always wanted to do. At times I feel like I am the proto-example of the Gen X-Y kind of guy who is just all over the place with no clear direction or intent. 

To be honest, I don't think I would change anything of the strange and winding paths my life has taken.  I just wonder if I went back in time what might or could be different and whether I might be more settled.  God only knows, truly.

Like most of our culture these days, Christianity in the U.S. is undergoing a great deal of change.  There is a lot of angst around the changes within our culture and society that show that we are no longer a predominately Christian nation (implicitly or explicitly).  In addition, our current church culture caters to a philosophical and theological perspective that proving itself to not be very popular among emerging generations.

This article from the Wall Street Journal, entitled "The Perils of 'Wannabe Cool' Christianity', touches on some of the machinations going on within the Christianity right now in order to try to be "relevant" with changing culture and young people.  As the author concludes, this jump to trendiness and shock value will probably not work for much longer.

From the article:

Statistics like these have created something of a mania in recent years, as baby-boomer evangelical leaders frantically assess what they have done wrong (why didn't megachurches work to attract youth in the long term?) and scramble to figure out a plan to keep young members engaged in the life of the church.

Increasingly, the "plan" has taken the form of a total image overhaul, where efforts are made to rebrand Christianity as hip, countercultural, relevant. As a result, in the early 2000s, we got something called "the emerging church"--a sort of postmodern stab at an evangelical reform movement. Perhaps because it was too "let's rethink everything" radical, it fizzled quickly. But the impulse behind it--to rehabilitate Christianity's image and make it "cool"--remains.

and the conclusion:

If the evangelical Christian leadership thinks that "cool Christianity" is a sustainable path forward, they are severely mistaken. As a twentysomething, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don't want cool as much as we want real.

If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it's easy or trendy or popular. It's because Jesus himself is appealing, and what he says rings true. It's because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched--and we want an alternative. It's not because we want more of the same.

Read the whole article!

The Imago Dei Initiative doesn't seek to employ trendy artifacts that become so 5-minutes ago in 2 minutes flat, but seek to understand and receive the enduring, ancient Faith experienced in new ways.  We seek to understand and experience the enduring faith and learn how to pass it on.  We seek to find simply ways of living the profound Faith in ways that get to the heart of the longings of emerging generations in every changing contexts.

Here is an interesting article from the New York Times.  Entitled, Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime, the article describes findings concerning the affect of digital technology and its constant use on the brain, particularly on the brain's ability to actually learn, to form permanent memories, to synthesis what has been inputted previously, and to be creative.  Devises like the Blackberry, iPhone, iPad - the entire digitial cornucopia - are used to fill up even small amounts of downtime. Our purpensity to not simple be is a real hindrance to our own well being, it seems.  We are coming to the point where we allow no downtime, no time to "clear our heads," and we are robbing ourselves of simple rest. Perhaps we are even hindering our own ability to effectively learn. 

What does this do to feelings of tranquility, our ability to not be bored, or our ability to actually engage with people in ways that are deeper than relational "sound-bites"?

"Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it's had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories," said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, "you prevent this learning process."

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

At the University of Michigan, a study found that people learned significantly better after a walk in nature than after a walk in a dense urban environment, suggesting that processing a barrage of information leaves people fatigued.

I've often thought that a growing and now significant hindrance to our faith and relationship not only with God but with one another revolves around our inability to be still, quiet, alone with our own thoughts, and simply be with someone without the need to be entertained or occupied. 

A strategic triumph of the Enemy of our Faith is to so distract us that we no longer give time to sit quietly with God, to study the contemplate the Word of God, or meditate on what it all means for life and love.  We cannot know God without being still, but if we are so conditioned and culturally malformed to avoid those times of stillness and quiet, we will never know the depth of relationship that is possible with God.  We will not know the depth of relationship that is possible with one another, but rather we allow ourselves to be conditioned for the superficial and the temporary.

We in the Church will need to be intentional and determined to give ourselves to periods of downtime, quiet, and stillness.  We, as followers of the Christ, will need to be examples to a world that will grow weary of this form of life.  When people begin looking for an alternative, will they see examples of a way of life that doesn't shun technology but also is able to singularly focus for a lengthy period of time on the person sitting across from us, a life that is content and at peace without distraction?  What will be the witness of the Church?  Will people see the imago of God and an image of life that is substantially different and compelling for a good alternative, or will be look just like everyone else? 

This will be a coming mission of the Church - to reintroduce to the human experience, in the U.S. at least, examples of real, tactile relationships, a peace that comes from within and not determined by outside circumstances or influences, creativity, and a whole list of other things.  This is a common proclivity to the human experience from time beginning - we do harm to ourselves.

This recent article from the Episcopal News Service has prompted me to think again about the "E" word - you know, "evangelism".  The article is entitled, "Mobilizing for mission: Seminarians organize for young adult evangelism."  I have a lot of respect for this group of Episcopal seminarians in their effort to engage in evangelism, but to what are we calling people?  Is there an enduring aspect to what we are calling these young adults?

When I ask myself that question, here is what I keep coming back to: The Church needs to reclaim one of its primary purposes - to be about the Cure of Souls.  That means we call people to God through Jesus Christ first and foremost.  But, why should anyone be compelled to heed such a call, particularly if they take an account of our lives as examples of what we are calling them to?  How is our witness?

Within certain circles of the Christian Church in the U.S., and I suppose everywhere, the "E" word is avoided with a passion or simply redefined to fit particular sensibilities.

Growing up in American-Evangelicalism/Pentecostalism, evangelism was supposed to be at the center of my experience of the Faith.  We believed that we and all Christians are charged by God to "go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation." We believed this because, "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." (Mark 16:15-16). 

While I certainly upheld this call to us all to preach the gospel, the problem I had with all the evangelism stuff was the preferred and accepted method most often used by American-Evangelicals, particularly in my context, which was the college campus.  The method used was often refereed to as "Confrontational Evangelism".  In a more crass and defamatory description, some people referred to it as "bible-thumping."

I was uncomfortable with evangelism all together because this was all I knew.  This method to me seemed fake, contrived, and forced in a way that didn't leave room for dealing with real and honest questions and doubts.  To me, it did not seem to respect there object of the effort.  Paul, as described in Acts 17, often said something like, "Come, let us reason together...", but there was no real reasoning within confrontational evangelism.  It seemed overly superficial.  Yet, I personally knew people who came to be reconciled to God ("saved," in good Evangelical verbiage) through this method - God works as God will work!  Who are we to get in the way of the Spirit because of our own likes and dislikes!

I was drawn to another concept of evangelism during those days - "Friendship Evangelism."  This method seemed more natural and respectful.  We befriended people simply because we wanted to be friends, although added to the mix was our desire for the person to also be a friend of God.  The problem was the constant tension between being "in the world," but not "of the world." 

Being friends with a "worldling" sometimes seemed to ran counter to God's demand that we, "come out from among them". (2 Corinthians 6:17)  How could one just hang with a non-Christian and be okay with that when being with him/her may be a bad influence on one's own struggle against sin and striving for holiness?  Besides, their eternal soul hung in the balance and it was up to us to do something about that.  Pressure!  Pressure that made real friendship nearly impossible.  That's why these "friendships" rarely lasted.  When the object of our efforts didn't get saved, we dumped her/him and moved on to another prospect.  This was our witness of "friendship" among many non-Christians.  Some kind of friendship, eh?

This was why I hated "evangelism."

Within American Mainline Christianity, there took hold among some an idea that "evangelism" wasn't so much converting people to Christianity, but doing things that helping the poor and down trodden and then hoping that those helped would like us.  I remember while in seminary a representative from our Church's Foreign Missions office declared that we no longer try to convert people, because that is disrespectful of their culture and religion, but we simply help them be all that they can be.  To what are we calling people? 

Today, for much of the Mainline, the "E" word has been redefined. "Evangelism" is simply helping, and then perhaps someone might like to help us help other people.  Helping others is a very good thing, but is it that to which we are to call people?

I can't get into this kind of "evangelism," either.

Within the Imago Dei Society, we center on Formation and Witness.  The Imago Dei Initiative is the means for helping us to live lives that reflect God, that reflect the transformational nature of God's work within us, and that reflect something compellingly different within the surrounding contexts of our lives that get people's attention.  What we hope gets people's attention is not due to marketing, gimmicks, or manipulation, but simply the way we live - "There is just something compellingly and delightfully different about these people!"  The difference, if seen, is due to our relationship with God first and foremost and the re-formation of heart and mind that results. 

In a society and culture that is increasingly similiar to  the pre-Constantinain environment, "evangelism" comes about because something about our lives and example attracts the attention of those seeking something other than the status-quo.  If we can be the "image of God" with integrity, with honest, and with humility in our everyday lives among the people we encounter regularly, we will be doing "evangelism."  We will be a good witness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We do "evangelism" whether we want to or not.  The question we have to answer is whether the image of God and the Christian life we portray is on target (as best it can be in success and failure) and whether we call people to be reconciled with God before anything else.  Do we?

We hope to call people to two things consistently - be reconciled to God and with one another.  Take up your relationship with God and discover how you are transformed to live "life to the full". (John 10:10)  It isn't easy, and that is why we need one another to keep on. 

 

Sufjan Stevens released his new EP, yesterday!  The title is, "All Delighted People," and contains 8 tracks.  His sound is a bit different than former albums, but you can tell it is still Sufjan.  Good stuff - give it a listen.  Better yet, but the album!

An article in the Sunday New York Times on intentional-communities of faith in NYC.  This is my intent.

Sharing the Faith, Splitting the Rent

Justin Hilton, 21, arrived at the brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant on July 1. Mr. Hilton works at a video store in Park Slope, and moved from Crown Heights, where he shared an apartment with a friend. He now pays $500 a month to be a part of Radical Living.

A child of missionaries to West Africa, he grew up in communal situations, and he was seeking similar surroundings when he discovered Radical Living.

"Living here in this community is not just like I have people my age or into the same things as me," he says. "It stretches you and makes you hopefully more selfless, living for something more than just your own comfort."

He said that living where religion is as much a part of daily roommate life as making sure there's milk in the fridge, means the principles of his faith are always in practice. "Church, when it's once a week, you can turn it off," Mr. Hilton said.

A lot has been written and the comments continue concerning the overturning of California's ballot initiative, Proposition 8, overturning the legislature's establishing equality in marriage for same-sex couples.  A couple points I would like to make concerning what I've read and the opinions that are being expressed:

1. The U.S. is NOT a Direct Democracy.  We are a Republic!  "The people" do not have the final say except through their elected officials within our system of checks and balances.  The courts mitigate the "tyranny of the majority" that can result when the majority seeks to deny equal consideration, access, and protection under the law to whole groups of people.  The legislatures mitigate an equal tendency among the courts to engage in the "tyranny of the minority."

2.  I am astounded that the Religious Right, anti-gay forces use the "will of the people" as their primary argument when fighting against state sanctioned same-sex marriage.  How short-sighted can they be?  They will not uphold this position and the right of the "will of the people" to rule when they are disadvantaged.  We will not find them accepting the "will of the people" if a state referendum passes that demands all crosses be removed from public view. They show themselves to be political hypocrites in taking on this tactic.

What are they going to do when the "will of the people" shifts in favor of same-sex marriage?  It is shifting! It is reckless for any group to base the success of and justification for their social or political agendas on the "will of the people."  "The people" are fickle!

3. The courts are not siding with the anti-gay marraige forces.  The courts are reflecting the changing attitudes of the American public regarding homosexuality and same-sex marriage - like they did during the Civil Rights era.  So, the Religious Right has to turn people, the voters, against their enemy the courts in order to maintain their victories.  This is so terribly short-sighted.  When the winds of public opinion change to reflect a strong bias and prejudice against Christians, which will happen, the courts will be the only recourse we have.  If the public believes the courts cannot be trusted (which is different than the belief that the judges are corrupt), the Republic as we know it is done for.

4. The anti-same-sex marriage folks are just mean spirited, because their political and social agenda drives them and not the love of Christ, which they claim.  Here is an example from the American Family Association responce to Judge Walker's decision to overturn Proposition 8:

The American Family Association (AFA) has called for Judge Walker's impeachment. Under the Constitution, judges may be impeached if they violate a standard of "good Behaviour." According to the AFA, Walker violated this standard in two ways...

Second, the AFA said, "Judge Walker is an open homosexual, and should have recused himself from this case due to his obvious conflict of interest." AFA's Bryan Fischer further said, "[Walker] is Exhibit A as to why homosexuals should be disqualified from public office ... A man who ignores time-honored standards of sexual behavior simply cannot be trusted with the power of public office." [emphasis mine]  (Source)

So, homosexuals should not be allowed to hold public offices?  What if homosexuals are elected to public office by the "will of the people"?

  

I worked as the Data Analyst for the three year, multi-million dollar, multi-national research study (it was a real study!) dealing with healthcare benefits for Episcopal clergy and lay employees.  In our research, it became blatantly apparent that clergy are an unhealthy bunch.  The nature of the work and difficulty we have setting boundaries contribute to our lives being less than healthy.  We are undisciplined in this area, too.

I have found that I actually have to physically leave home and neighborhood (get out of town) so that I will  take a true day off!

This article appeared recently on AOL's blog, "Politics Daily."  It is entitled, "No Rest For the Holy: Clergy Burnout a Growing Concern," by David Gibson, Religion Reporter.  Here are a couple paragraphs:

"The untenable nature of the experience for me [being a pastor/priest] was being designated the holiest member of the congregation, who could be in all places at all times and require no time for sermon preparation," Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, said in describing her memoir, "Leaving Church," about her decision to abandon the pulpit. "Those aren't symptomatic of a mean congregation; those are normal expectations of 24/7 availability."

Indeed, unlike doctors or police, for example, pastors are supposed to be people who have dedicated their lives to a spiritual goal and are not expected to focus on themselves and their own welfare in the here and now.

"I really don't think people think about their pastors," said Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell, research director of the Duke Clergy Health Initiative. "They admire their pastor, and their pastor is very visible. But they want their pastor to be the broker between them and God, and they don't want them to be as human as they themselves are."

Further on:

A program called the National Clergy Renewal Program, funded by the Lilly Endowment, has been underwriting sabbaticals for pastors for several years; the program will provide up to $50,000 to 150 congregations in the coming year. And places like The Alban Institute in Herndon, Va., are studying the topic and offering expertise and resources to denominations trying to make their clergy healthier...

But experts also say the solutions have to start at the congregational level.

Congregants can encourage pastors to take time off, and not view everything in the church as the pastor's responsibility. They can also be sure to provide healthy food at church events. But clergy must also learn find time to exercise or relax, even if it means saying no to some requests. Otherwise, they won't be healthy enough to serve their flock later on.

An interesting little piece in the Huffington Post - Why It's Cook to Go to Church.  In addition, it is interesting that he went to Union and seems to have such an attitude toward the ancient and enduring Traditions - Catholic and Apostolic.  These are generally not the norm for Union students.  I wonder why he attended a seminary for his degree?  What initially brought him even that far?

"Then, in seminary, taking classes on monasticism and ancient Christianity, I began to strongly feel the presence of God. I got inspired to visit monasteries and very ancient churches, first in the U.S., then researching and filming hermits in Egypt, then in Greece and Eastern Europe, and finally in Russia. I met hermits and monks, and they let me film their descriptions of the inner Christian life. They took me to their monastery churches. My studies in Christian mysticism and ancient texts grew deeper and deeper. I discovered a prayer, the Jesus Prayer, or Kyrie Eleison -- "Lord have mercy," or "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me." (Some add "a sinner" at the end.) I loved ancient church so much that I'm making a movie and writing a book about them, coming early next year (Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer is a not-for-profit feature film, the result of my studies and renewed love-affair with Jesus Christ and church)."

Alright, here is "Coming Up Close."  IMHO, one of the best songs ever written.

I loved 'Till Tuesday - the name, the music, the look, the album covers.  I've followed Aimee Mann long after the band broke up - have all her albums.  She has been referred to as the "last of the tortured artists" and an "artist's artist".  I remember in the mid-1980's sitting in the studio working on my graphic design projects listening to this album.  "Coming Up Close" is easily the best song!  New Wave, female vocalists with low voices... I had a platonic crush on Aimee Mann.

 


Well, she really needs to have a guitar in her hands in this video - not so good at free dancing.  This was when MTV had "VJ's" and actually played videos - all day!  Then, of course, there was the keyboardist.

Another photo from Red Hook.

Here is the quote:

"I think there is something much bigger going on than finding a niche market and asking how should we position this product of the gospel so that those people will appreciate it, and will like it, and will accept it. We're really asking a deeper question about who we are in a changing cultural environment when it comes to the way think, the values we hold, the tools that we use, and the aesthetics that are meaningful to us." -Doug Pragitt (describing the concepts behind his new book, "Church in the Inventive Age")   Pagitt is the pastor of Salomon's Porch Church.

This is the melee in which I desire to be and where the Imago Dei Society has a real place within the greater arena of Anglicanism. Well, actually, this whole way of considering and thinking has had a place within Anglicanism, but to understand how we continue to do this thing called Anglicanism (this Christianity) in emerging cultures and with emerging generations are the questions we need to continually ask!

I came across one of the ministries that has as its purpose (or its obsession) the condemning of the "Emergent" side of the Church as being heretical. I don't know whether it is simply their inability to understand enculturation and that we are all raised within a cultural system that forms us in the ways we collectively think, the way we understand the world around us and our place it in, what we consider to be aesthetically pleasing or appropriate, and even what we consider to be moral and ethical.  I don't know whether they are simply ignorant of disciplines like anthropology, sociology, etc., or what is really going on within them.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ and the divine Logos do not change, but we certainly do, our cultures certainly do, and what we consider to be self-evident truth certainly does.  So, groups like this, I suppose, either honestly not to understand, are being willfully ignorant (and as a former teacher, this is an astounding tragedy), or are intransigent in their beliefs - fundamentalists, in other words. 

What is this particular ministry, you might ask?  Apprising Ministries.  I don't know anything about this, really, and perhaps much of what they do is really good, but with regard to Emergent stuff, they have a thorn in their craw!  So, make up your own mind. 

Thomas Chatterton Williams in his book, Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,00 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture, wrote: "Nietzsche believed the greatest deeds are thoughts. 'The world revolves around the inventors of new values,' he wrote.  For more than thirty years the black world has revolved around the inventors of hip-hop values, and this has been a decisive step backward." (p. 218)

In his book, Williams describes his experiences growing up with increasing allegiance to those inventors and the hip-hop culture, until discovering a much broader world when he went off to college - and more importantly due to his father's constant influence and love.  Certainly, not all of hip-hop is negative, but much of it is.  For many, many black people, according to their own testimony, the more gangsta forms have had a devastating effect on black culture and those forms are the "new values" taken up decisively by a generation.

Williams goes on to write that his generation, in order to pay the debt they owe their ancestors for all they suffered through in order to make possible in his generation a black President, who is a counter example as a "nuanced thinker" of hip-hop culture, his generation must take up the challenge to do things differently and make things right for the sake of the new generations coming.

I see in Williams' description of his experience and the "new values" of the hip-hop phenomina a similiar experience of another generation and another racial group - the overwhelmingly white Baby Boomer generation.  The "1960's" generation proclaimed a new morality with a whole set of "new values."  In their belief that their generation's purpose was to usher in a Brave New World, the age of Aquarius, they have been relentless in overturning anything they perceive as getting in their way.   As Nietzsche said, the world has revolved around this new morality and their new values.

Like hip-hop, not all that this generation has done is wrong or bad.  Many aspects of white, 1950's culture needed to be upended - racism, the "Stepford Wives" expectation of women are examples.  The proverbial baby was thrown out with the bathwater, however, because of an unnuanced rejection of all that came before them.  We are beginning to reap the whirlwind. 

One predominate characteristic of this generation is their rejection of the notion that their ancestors, or even their parents' generation, have anything worthwhile to say to them or to teach them, and as a result their generation is known as the first one to cast off history and lessons from the past as informants of how things should be. This may be a bit of overstatement, but not by much.  What is even more sad is that the generation in the aggregate does not acknowledge or perhaps even realize the tremendous sacrifice and denial of self past generations have endured for their generation's existence.

I am hopeful when I read the demographic trends of younger generations.  They will have their own problems, of course, but there seems to be a reclaiming of history and past experience as informants for figuring out how to live life.  As Williams claims it is up to his generation to overturn the very negative influences of hip-hop on African-American culture, so is it up to his generation, including all races, to overturn the negative aspects of the Baby Boomer zeitgeist for all Americans.

Fr. Dan Martins in his blog, Confessions of a Caricoa, posted an entry entitled, Missional Notes.  He is writing about the services of the Church and their connection with people of varying degrees of knowledge about or commitment to Christ.  He is wondering about the growing population of people who are very much in American post-Christendom and what can be understood in these days to draw people into relationship with God through Jesus Christ and the Church.

One thing mentioned is that a service like High Solemn Mass (which we do at St. Paul's during the regular season) might be over-kill to someone without a church background - the uninitiated or unconverted.  Fr. Dan writes, "Solemn High Mass is solid food, and is likely to induce spiritual indigestion in those who haven't been carefully and gradually prepared for it. Where's our version of breast milk, strained carrots, and Cheerios?"

How do we configure and do "Church" in Post-Christendom and in a culture that is becoming far more pre-Constantinian than post? 

We can no longer assume that new people coming in the door of whatever service or activity the Church engages in know anything about the Christian Gospel, Jesus, or the worship of the Church beyond often trite sound-bytes.  Something like a High Solemn Mass can be very intimidating, and if we actually obey our vows to uphold the Canons of this Church we cannot assume they are baptized Christians, so they may not be able to participate in the central act of such a service.  (They can, of course, come up for a blessing, which is exactly what every unbaptized person to whom I have explained the requirement for communion and why has done once they know they can come forward for a blessing.)  Perhaps this kind of service is for the initiated, while something else may be better suited for these post-Christian seekers.  A fine, well done choral Morning Prayer or Evansong may well fit the bill.

And, how do we configure and do "Church" differently in ways that resonate with younger people and still remain faithful to who and what we are as Anglican Christians in the Episcopal Church?  After all, they are looking for that kind of faithfulness.  An interesting thing about the demographic research - the majority of GenY'ers would rather us say up front who and what we are and clearly delineate what we believe.  They are looking for people and groups who are clear and unafraid to stand for what they believe, as long as we can deal with their honest questions, opinions, and doubts forthrightly and graciously.  With many in the younger generations, it comes down to a matter of rebuilding trust before we can earn the right to speak into their lives.

These are the very questions that I envision the Imago Dei Society dealing with - a charism to research and analyze emerging generations and the emerging cultures so we can meet them in authentic ways that resonate with them without jettisoning the Tradition, both in liturgy and in belief.  Then, taking the knowledge and engaging in "experimental" worshiping communities to see what sticks and what doesn't.

I am about finished with a very good book by the new author, Thomas Chatterton Williams, entitled, "Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture."  For the past several years, I have bought an autobiography as one of my summer books.  This is that kind of book for this summer... Williams writing about his life, and I'm finishing it too quickly. 

In his acknowledgments, Williams quotes Truman Capote, "Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot."  A good statement, a good sentiment, a good thing to remember.

I hated when in school we were told to write about a favorite hero, and everyone seemed to jump right to it.  I couldn't.  I never really had any heroes, and wondered whether something was wrong with me.

But what about those who gave me confidence?  If I am honest, and I have to ask myself if I am truly remembering correctly, I have encountered more that broke down my confidence than raised it up.  I really have had to be my own motivator for much of my life. 

The person that came to mind most quickly is Dr. Terry Kuhn.  He is retired now, but while at Kent State he was the Vice-Provost and Dean of the new academic unit in which I worked.  He was my boss.  There is much to admire in Dr. Kuhn.  He had enough confidence in me to allow me to branch into areas of interest and person development that never would have been possible, otherwise.  He allowed me to develop the whole technology department for our unit, when I was a student development specialist and hardly a technology guy.

This may be strange way of conveying such a thing, but one of the greatest compliments I remember receiving came from Dr. Kuhn.  I asked him to write a letter of recommendation for me as a perspective student to The General Theological Seminary.  He wrote in the letter that he thought this turn in my life would result in a tremendous waste of talent, but he highly recommended me nevertheless.  There you go. 

Then, of course, there is my mother!

I know I shouldn't get into this, even before I start.  I have decidedly not been visiting all the Anglican/Episcopalian blogs very often, because, basically, they were truly causing me a lot of angst and distracting me from other important ministry stuff.  I have two brain cells, and when one and half of them is dealing with how this person doesn't like what that bishop said or whatever that other Primate declared, well, that only leaves 1/2 a brain cell to deal with the rest of my life - just too much to do.  In the end, all this stuff in the Church will come to nothing more than distraction within our culture and defamation of the cause of Christ.

Yet, when I hear this new line of reasoning and affront coming out of the leadership of this Church - whether lay or clergy - I just can't help myself.  When I hear people attempt to use a line of argument around the Episcopal Church's sense of "colonial victimhood" when the Church of England's & the Anglican Communion's Archbishop of Canterbury makes decisions that spank or put into "time-out" this Church for its self-centered actions, well, that is just beyond the pale.  It really is.  When I hear the leaders of the provinces in Africa making the "colonial victimhood" accusation against the "Western" provinces, I can understand their justifications for such accusation (even while I think they use that accusation for convenience and to attempt to justify their own actions of rebellion within the Communion).  (Before God, we will all give an account for what we do and say according to the attitudes of our hearts, and if any of us do things and then justify those doings with fine sounding arguments that are not the attitudinal reality within our heart - lying, in other words - then we will give an account to our final Judge and jury.)

This Church in the U.S. has absolutely no right to claim colonial victimhood!  

We as a Church act in the world with respect to the wider Anglican Communion just like the Bush administration acted politically and militarily in the world.  We expect that we have the right to do whatever we want unilaterally because we are so developed and so enlightened and so absolutely correct and our "prophetic" doings are so righteous. We can do anything just so it is justified in our own minds no matter what hardship it may cause for anyone else. In our hubris and the resulting blindness, we actually believe that it is "good for them." 

Then, when we get pushback, or spanked for our childishness (which ++Rowan is doing, now) by those foreigners, then we start to act with petulance.  It is laughable that we attempt to rebuke the English Church because we were once a colony of England - nearly 300 years ago!   We, at this point in our ecclesiastical decline as a Church, can no longer really act this way, but we still do so because this generation of leadership doesn't know how to act in any other way. We are blind to our own "colonizing" attitudes and "imperialistic" actions with respect to the rest of the Communion, and particularly those "poor, backward" Anglicans in most of Africa (except Southern Africa, because they agree with us). 

The time is coming sooner than later when the rest of the world will stand up to the United States politically, economically, and militarily and say, "No more!"  Just wait until that happens and see the epileptic fits this country will go into.  We will become truly dangerous during the transition from world dominance to a far lesser status.  We will assert our dominance, in the mean time, by brute force if need be because we have lost our moral authority as a great nation and beacon of freedom.  This is what is happening to the Episcopal Church, our Church, within the Communion and with many of our former ecumenical partners.  We may not lob physical bombs (or money, in our case); we will simply not listen to anyone else, hands over our ears. We will simply not face up to reality and our place in the world Communion.   Oh, we want diversity and multiculturalism all right, just so long as they believe just like we do or pretend to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

We have to come up with fine arguments or attacks against those English colonizers in order to attempt to save face, but we continue to act in ways that do nothing much more that prove that we are not trustworthy and unwilling to listen to the plight of those less fortunate than our own American selves.

It isn't that I disagree with women being clergy or LBGT people being members, priests, or bishops of our Anglican Churches. It isn't that I don't think we can or should be advocates of such things around the Communion or the greater Church. What I absolutely disagree with is the way this generation of leadership in our Church has been conducting itself with respect to institutional change and the "controversial" issues.  We treat those issues as civil rights causes and make decisions in like manner.  This is not the way the Church should handle things. 

Now, because our leadership makes decisions in such a political or social manner (they know no other way), we are losing the knowledge of how to made decisions as a the Body of Christ, internationally.  And herein lies the problem of trust and "faith and order" as the other provinces attempt to order their lives when they cannot ignore what the Americans' are doing without much regard for their plight.

"My parents told me a story that encapsulates Pappy's paternal psychology completely.  As a baby, I was with my mother in our old home in Newark, crawling freely while she was trying to clean and watch after my very active five-year-old brother. We were upstairs, on the second floor of the house. At one end of the room, there was a door that led out into the hallway and down a long flight of carpeted stairs onto the parlor level, where my father had his study and received visitors.  I was a quiet baby, and it wouldn't have been odd for me to not be making much noise as I crawled.  Somehow, my mother had gotten distracted with my brother, and I made my way over to the door, which wasn't properly closed.  I got out into the hallway and soon began tumbling down the staircase in a bright blue bundle of diapers and pajamas, rushing toward the hardwood floor below.  As my mother gaped from the landing above, the door to my father's study flew open and out dove Pappy to catch me like a fly ball before I reached the ground.  He had been in the middle of a meeting when suddenly he hopped up, told his guests to wait, and bolted to the door.  He almost certainly saved my life that morning.

"'How in the world did you even hear that?' one of the stunned guests asked him afterward.

"'I've been listening for that sound from the moment we brought the baby home from the hospital,' Pappy said.

"I grew up knowing that no matter where I was or what I was doing, Pappy never stopped listening for the sound of me falling."

Williams, Thomas Chatterton, "Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture";  New York (2010): The Penguin Press, pp 33-34.