The City #18

Sometimes, walking around the City I get a small, short glimpse of life – a snapshot, a moment in the lives of a few individuals. Sometimes, these snapshots are vividly embedded in my mind and remembering them seems as real as when I experienced them.
The other day I was walking from work to the subway. I crossed the street and walking to the intersection I saw a father with his young son in hand. The father, perhaps the boy’s grandfather, was bending low as they walked and was talking earnestly to the boy, about what I’m not sure. The little boy, who was probably an older-three or four years old, was looking up into the sky or at the buildings and was just doing “raspberries.”
Just that moment – the earnestness and seriousness of aging men and the frivolity and carefree-ness of little boys.
I’ve been in a “people are just plain idiots” phase over the last couple of weeks. This glimpse of joyous life brings me back to reality and balance and the realization that I do love God’s brazenly chaotic Creation.

The Book of Common Prayer and its use!

Okay, so for how long have I been saying that non-Episcopalians are picking up our Book of Common Prayer and finding within it a way of faith that is drawing them in? How long?
So, I downloaded the study guild guide (I’m just pathetic at proof reading!) to a book on Christian spirituality written by the director of L’Abri. Guess what, it is full of prayers drawn from, what? Where might those prayers have come? Within this “Evangelical” setting, where did the director pull prayers for the study guide? YES, from The Book of Common Prayer.
Sometimes, I feel like huge groups of people within the Episcopal Church are doing all they can to run away from our own Prayer Book, all the while so many disaffected Christians and people from non-liturgical and Evangelical backgrounds are running to it.
Download the PDF of the studyguide and see for yourselves. Click here.

Today’s L’Abri

There are a couple interesting articles in this recent issue of Christianity Today (March, 2008). One article has to do with L’Abri – a “retreat” established by Francis Schaeffer and his wife in the Alps of Switzerland. Lots of ’60’s – ’80’s young people flocked (relatively speaking) to L’Abri to debate and then sit at the feet of Schaeffer as he discussed and commented on Christian life within the West and within “Modernism.” L’Abri was a haven for those disaffected young people who had a difficult time with the common Evangelicalism and the Christian religion in general.
Schaeffer died during the 1980’s and over the years L’Abri has changed from a strongly Evangelical community within the Modernist approach to knowledge and Truth to a now Post-Modernist community that is very different from the place that Schaeffer established when he was at the helm.
I can remember back as an undergraduate in the early ’80’s dreaming of going to L’Abri. I have to admit that I still want to spend time there even as I have changed and can now feel the inner drive and throb of seeking that many a student deals with (after all, we are always students, are we not?). Frankly, I would love to have such a place here, now, and be part of such a community! It fits well within my notions of “intentional community.” The idea of being about the living of an authentic life in Christ as we strive together to not be bound by cultural convention but to understand the unplumbable depths of God’s Way.
Anyway, here is a couple paragraphs I think are insightful concerning younger folk:

[Thomas Rauchenstein, a youngish Canadian and a current L’Abri worker, commenting on Schaeffer’s presuppositions when making his arguments] “Presuppositionalism can appear to be humble, but actually it’s quite arrogant… It says, ‘You can’t critique my assumptions.’ students today have the despair of having lost that certainty.” The postmodern critique of objectivity has saturated them. “We’re at the transition point, philosophically,” said Peltier. “People talk in the language of postmodernism, but what they want from Christianity is very much modern.”
In other words, when students say they seek authenticity, what they really want it certainly, an inner knowing. Convinced that they won’t find it intellectually, many pursue that feeling of conviction through experience: in the communal life and worship at L’Abri; in the books by emerging church authors that are popular with many students, and in the charismatic worship style that – though Pentecostals have never been a significant presence – is no longer taboo here.”

I might suggest that for a significant segment of the student population, the traditional forms of worship – in the sacramental and liturgical – also enable this population to “experience” God in ways that their former/current church-culture did not provide them.

Lambeth and the Bishop

The word has come from Lambeth Palace that Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire will not receive an invitation to the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops this summer. I’m not going to say whether I think this is a good or bad thing, because I just don’t know. Part of me says bad, part of me says it is a necessary although regrettable decision that good will come out of. I just don’t know. It is all a regrettable and unfortunate mess, regardless.
Here is the report offered by those of the U.S. House of Bishops who were in conversation with the Lambeth Conference officials regarding Gene’s participation.
Here is Gene Robinson’s response, which I think is a very gracious and responsible response!
Here is the Episcopal News Service announcement.

STORM!

Wow, we are having a real storm in Brooklyn – almost like a good sideways-rain thunderstorm I liked in Ohio. Rain is pelting the windows. Wind is shaking the windows. This is kind of fun!
The old group Lone Justice (Maria McKee) on their album “Shelter” had a great song about “terrible” and then “gentle” Georgia storms. I miss good thunderstorms!

New Statistics on Church Attendance and Avoidance – Barna

Changing demographics and attitudes necessitates changing definitions related to those to attend and avoid church.
From the Barna Research Group:
New Statistics on Church Attendance and Avoidance

New Measures
According to Barna, one way of examining people’s participation in faith communities is by exploring how they practice their corporate faith engagement. Unveiling a new measurement model, Barna identified the following five segments:
+ Unattached – people who had attended neither a conventional church nor an organic faith community (e.g., house church, simple church, intentional community) during the past year. Some of these people use religious media, but they have had no personal interaction with a regularly-convened faith community. This segment represents one out of every four adults (23%) in America. About one-third of the segment was people who have never attended a church at any time in their life.
+ Intermittents – these adults are essentially “under-churched” – i.e., people who have participated in either a conventional church or an organic faith community within the past year, but not during the past month. Such people constitute about one out of every seven adults (15%). About two-thirds of this group had attended at least one church event at some time within the past six months.
+ Homebodies – people who had not attended a conventional church during the past month, but had attended a meeting of a house church (3%).
– adults who had attended both a conventional church and a house church during the past month. Most of these people attend a conventional church as their primary church, but many are experimenting with new forms of faith community. In total, Blenders represent 3% of the adult population.
+ Conventionals – adults who had attended a conventional church (i.e., a congregational-style, local church) during the past month but had not attended a house church. Almost three out of every five adults (56%) fit this description. This participation includes attending any of a wide variety of conventional-church events, such as weekend services, mid-week services, special events, or church-based classes.
Cross-Pollinating the Church
In addition to those five segments, the Barna report revealed that there is a growing degree of ministry crossover in America. When examining the spiritual participation of adults during the past month, the Barna team discovered that more than one out of every five adults had been involved in two or more types of churches: a conventional church, a house church, a marketplace church, a real-time ministry event on the Internet, or a live ministry event in the community.
Demonstrating the complexity of measuring people’s faith commitments, the Barna study identified the nature of people’s overlapping faith practices.
+ Among adults who were churched (either conventionally or alternatively) 15% had experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through a faith-oriented website within the past month. Half as many (7%) said they had such an experience through a real-time event on the Internet.
+ One out of every eight churched adults (13%) said they had experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through a ministry that met in the marketplace (e.g., their workplace, athletic event, etc.) during the past month.
+ Twice as many churched people (28%) said they had experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through their involvement with a special ministry event (such as a worship concert or community service activity).
+ A majority of the public claimed to have experienced the presence of God or expressed their faith in God through some form of interaction with religious television or radio programs.
Reaching the Unattached
With the final weeks of the Easter season rapidly approaching, the Barna study also identified some of the characteristics of the Unattached that might enable conventional churches or other ministries to more adeptly connect with those people.
Compared to regular churchgoers, the Unattached are:
# more likely to feel stressed out
# less likely to be concerned about the moral condition of the nation
# much less likely to believe that they are making a positive difference in the world
# less optimistic about the future
# far less likely to believe that the Bible is totally accurate in its principles
# substantially more likely to believe that Satan and the Holy Spirit are symbolic figures, but are not real
# more likely to believe that Jesus Christ sinned while He was on earth
# much more likely to believe that the holy literature of the major faiths all teach the same principles even though they use different stories
# less likely to believe that a person can be under demonic influence
# more likely to describe their sociopolitical views as “mostly liberal” than “mostly conservative”

The entire article is worth a read.

The Hermeneutics Quiz

So, I took “The Hermeneutics Quiz” offered by the people of Christianity Today and Leadership magazines. I came out having a “Progressive Hermeneutic.” This surprised me, frankly, because I do think I really am more moderate than progressive, unless one can be a “Progressive-Conservative,” which is what I’ve called myself politically since high school. Of course, that probably pans-out to be a plain ole’, ordinary, and boring “Moderate.”
So, here is where you can take “The Hermeneutics Quiz.”
And, here is the related article in the Leadership Journal magazine (online): Click here

The Madgalene Laundry

Back in 2003, Ashton and I went to see “The Magdalene Sisters.” It was a horrific tail of the abuse of a “wayward” girl in the Irish Magdalene laundries. A well done movie, I thought, but depressing – if true.
It seems that the story may be just that – a story, rather than the real life depiction of misery. It seems that a new book is coming out that shows that the author of the Madgalene laundry tail was a bit off in her depiction of her life. The “Misery Literature” industry keeps pumping out these supposedly real-life tails, but are they true? It reminds me of the book published here in the U.S. a couple years ago, James Frey’s “A Thousand Little Pieces,” which I read before it became a rage due to Oprah’s endorsement. Boy do I feel used.
Read this article from the Telegraph. What can we believe?
I like this last paragraph of the article:

“O’Beirne’s [the author of the book of her “experiences” with the laundry] own feelings about Kelly’s [the author of the new book debunking O’Beirne’s claims] investigation became clear on Irish TV last November, when he pulled out her birth certificate and school records, showing she had lied about her age, education and alleged adoption. O’Beirne, furious, hit him. As he commented at the time: ‘She can beat my back, but she can’t beat my book.'”

Moderation in all things…

I spent my formative years attending the Amherst Foursquare Church. It pains me to type the word, “Amherst” because they were the arch-rivals of my hometown, Vermilion, idyllically situated on the shores of Lake Erie.
Anyway, the Foursquare Church is a Pentecostal denomination of a few million started by the early-century revivalist Aimee Semple-McPherson (who was a fascinating individual and figure). I never knew what all the fuss was over women’s ordination! My experience in the church was good and bad and I’m glad I grew up there.
So, one of the tenants of belief held by the Foursquare Church that I have come to appreciate is this:

Moderation
We believe a Christians’ moderation should be obvious to others and that relationship with Jesus should never lead people into extremes of fanaticism; their lives should model that of Christ in uprightness, balance, humility, and self-sacrifice (Colossians 3:12, 13; Philippians 4:5).

It seems a bit ironic that Aimee penned this tenant, because, well, I suppose it was a tenant she hoped to live into because her life seemed not quite moderate. Moderation in all things – lives model after that of Christ consisting of balance, humility, and self-sacrifice. This is a good word.