Reclaiming The F Word

Sin Boldly and Other Summer Reads

One of our local religion writers here in Chicago - a columnist for the Sun-Times - has just published a new book. It has a decidedly familiar ring to it, for all of us Lut'erns out there, although the author isn't, I don't think. It's titled Sin Boldly: A Field Guide For Grace. I haven't read it yet but plan to. Amazon.com, for what it's worth, is pairing her book up with an Anne Lamott book - one of the few "Christian" readers I regularly really enjoy, mostly because she's just so flippin' real but also because nobody gets "left behind" in her Christian universe.

   

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Technorati Tags: cathleen falsani, anne lamott, sin boldly

Headline: "Religion Briefs"

Source: The local newspaper from a nearby community

Biggest news: Chicken dinner, craft show, "gone fishin" Vacation Bible School

I'm not kidding. Those are the highlights - the biggest things happening in the churches in the southwest suburbs of Chicago these days - the only real "newsworthy" stuff.

Read the whole article yourself and then ask yourself how many Christians might be wondering why "I Became A Christian and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt."

In fact, that's the title of a book by a guy named Vince Antonucci that might be worth a read. Here's an excerpt: 

Continue reading "Just Wondering" »

I'm teaching a class all day, everyday at the Lutheran seminary in Chicago this week. The title of the class is "Being & Doing Church in the X-Box Era." In the syllabus, I introduce the class this way:

OK, here’s my bias: Even and maybe especially in the midst of our changing culture, I believe theology matters. Many people who love Jesus, care about the church, and feel called to lead the church into mission in God’s world, get impatient with talking about this stuff. They just want to do it. Some of these people are my best friends. But I believe there is a deep connection between what we do and why we do it. The more articulate we are about what we think and what we know and what we believe, the more effective our actions will become. Transformation happens when people discover new categories, concepts, and language (or rediscover old ones!) that make sense of their experience, their lives, and their world. Just ask Martin Luther about this. Or Karl Marx. Or Jon Sobrino. Or Rosemary Radford Ruether. Or Jesus. So, you want to lead God’s people in mission in the midst of this X-Box culture?!? Well, what are you going to tell them? What language will you use to help them more deeply understand what God is up to? What theological categories will you use to help provide a framework for your work together? What biblical images will you turn to for motivation, direction, and encouragement? How will you answer the hard questions when they come up? How will you make decisions in the midst of confusing situations? How will you lead?? That’s what this course is all about. What actually happens in this course, though, is entirely up to you. We’ll read a couple of different authors and books together. We’ll spend time in Scripture. We’ll do a lot of talking, trying to sort this stuff out together. But the goal isn’t for you to figure out what our authors believe. It isn’t to figure out what I believe. The goal is to figure out, more deeply, what you believe; and to be able to express it – in word and deed – in a way that is authentic, inspired, and life-giving.

It was all catchy enough to get a nice size group to register. And we are having a roller coaster ride of a week together. It's been fun. But it's also been exhausting. 

Our reading list included these books:

PZ Myers is a biologist, U of MN prof, and blogger who broke the story on this side of the border about a couple of pesky Toronto college students who took all the books on the "Bibles & Bible Studies" bookshelf in their local store and quietly reshelved them in other areas i.e. Fiction, Humour, Sexuality, Erotica, Cuisine, Parenting, Mental Disorder, Parapsychology and the Occult. They left one book standing on the Bible Study shelf: Sam Harris' "Letter to a Christian Nation" calling all reasonable people to embrace a worldview sans god.

Everywhere I go, I see people reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, or The End of Faith by Sam Harris. My hunch has been that even people who believe in God are so sick and tired of the loud-mouthed, mean-spirited, often dangerous radicals that march in the armies of both fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity that listening to a sermon by an atheist feels like taking a walk through a cool summer rain. Cleansing, somehow. Mind-clearing.

People really are ready for something different.

In a new book called Not Quite What I Was Planning people sum up their life story in six words. Time magazine highlights a couple of them in the current issue:

"Well, I thought it was funny." - Stephen Colbert

"Brought it to a boil, often." - Mario Batali

"Revenge is living well, without you." - Joyce Carol Oates

What a great exercise. Made me think about how I'd sum up my own life. Here's a first draft, summing up the first 4 decades, anyway (not to mention the truth that I believe is at the core of the Christian faith):

Robert Wuthnow is a sociologist known for his research about all things 'religious' in America. He has a new book on the market called After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion. Brian McLaren reviews it in this month's issue of Christian Century. Brian says the biggest insight Wuthnow offers is that young adults are surprisingly open to spirituality...and even to Christianity. What's cool is that this isn't just wishful thinking on the part of denominational leaders or emerging church grant writers. This is based on the best data gathering effort around. But, Brian warns, none of us ought to make the mistake of thinking that these young adults are all just going to trip back in the door once little junior comes along. Church leaders need to be listening closely - and intentionally - to what these 20 and 30-somethings have to say. Both McLaren's review and Wuthnow's book are worth a look. But here's a quick glance at some of the numbers McLaren finds especially interesting in Wuthnow's research:

For a lot of mainline congregations, November = Stewardship Campaign. So, not surprising that I got an email last night from a pastor friend saying "Help!" Apparently, he was preparing a message on Genesis 12:1ff - where God tells Abraham and Sarah that they are being "blessed to be a blessing" - and all of a sudden found himself free falling into a Joel Osteen-like vortex. How do I talk about this without beating the Prosperity Gospel drum?, my frantic friend said.

This email led me, by the way, to Joel's web site, which tells us that he "has committed his life to serving and helping every person, regardless of background and economic status, to achieve their fullest potential." God doesn't get a plug until the very last sentence of this 2 page long description of the Osteen "ministry." Jesus is MIA. Maybe God needs a better agent.

This is the last excerpt from my newest book, titled Reclaiming the E Word: Waking Up To Our Evangelical Identity, which is due out in the spring. This book reports on the results of a "deep dive" I did, along with a team of researchers from the ELCA's Dept. of Research & Evaluation, into several of the fastest growing, large congregations in my denomination. All of them lean right, theologically and otherwise, and in the current Bible wars would probably be more inclined to ask "What does the Bible say?," as folks in the literalist/traditionalist camp would do, than the question I'm more inclined to ask, which is: "What is God saying to us today through the Biblical narrative?"

There are, in fact, of bunch of things about me that would make the leaders of these big churches uncomfortable. And vice versa.

But I came away from this research project WAY more interested in what we have to learn from these folks than I am in "fixing" anything I may think they may have wrong. Each one of them has been built on the idea that to be a Christian is to be evangelical. That is, they really believe - and have organized around the idea - that we have good news to share with the world. Frankly, I was inspired by my visits to these congregations. And I very much appreciated their willingness to have us peeking over their shoulders. I believe that, if we dare to listen, they can help wake us up to some very important things.

This is an excerpt from the final chapter, which is called "Waking Up To Transformational Power":

By some estimates, there are about 200 million firearms in the U.S.; and there is a gun in somewhere between 40-50% of all American households. In this land of the free, the faithful, and the ready to fire, a 44 year old high school English teacher in Oregon has just won the first phase of a legal quest for the right to carry a gun into her classroom. On July 4th - Independence Day - this year, Kyle Cassidy's book of photographs called Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners In Their Homes hit the book stores. His web site has a sampling of photos from the book. Visit it. Pick up the book. Watch the video below (there are some great examples of his still shots in the first minute). Take a good look at this so-called "Christian" nation of ours.Cassidy says he doesn't have a political agenda. He wants people with different views to stand next to each other in a gallery filled with these photos, having a conversation. Fair enough, Kyle. As long as the other side checks their weapons at the door.

Just Wondering

Headline: "Religion Briefs"

Source: The local newspaper from a nearby community

Biggest news: Chicken dinner, craft show, "gone fishin" Vacation Bible School

I'm not kidding. Those are the highlights - the biggest things happening in the churches in the southwest suburbs of Chicago these days - the only real "newsworthy" stuff.

Read the whole article yourself and then ask yourself how many Christians might be wondering why "I Became A Christian and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt."

In fact, that's the title of a book by a guy named Vince Antonucci that might be worth a read. Here's an excerpt: 

Continue reading "Just Wondering" »

I'm teaching a class all day, everyday at the Lutheran seminary in Chicago this week. The title of the class is "Being & Doing Church in the X-Box Era." In the syllabus, I introduce the class this way:

OK, here’s my bias: Even and maybe especially in the midst of our changing culture, I believe theology matters. Many people who love Jesus, care about the church, and feel called to lead the church into mission in God’s world, get impatient with talking about this stuff. They just want to do it. Some of these people are my best friends. But I believe there is a deep connection between what we do and why we do it. The more articulate we are about what we think and what we know and what we believe, the more effective our actions will become. Transformation happens when people discover new categories, concepts, and language (or rediscover old ones!) that make sense of their experience, their lives, and their world. Just ask Martin Luther about this. Or Karl Marx. Or Jon Sobrino. Or Rosemary Radford Ruether. Or Jesus. So, you want to lead God’s people in mission in the midst of this X-Box culture?!? Well, what are you going to tell them? What language will you use to help them more deeply understand what God is up to? What theological categories will you use to help provide a framework for your work together? What biblical images will you turn to for motivation, direction, and encouragement? How will you answer the hard questions when they come up? How will you make decisions in the midst of confusing situations? How will you lead?? That’s what this course is all about. What actually happens in this course, though, is entirely up to you. We’ll read a couple of different authors and books together. We’ll spend time in Scripture. We’ll do a lot of talking, trying to sort this stuff out together. But the goal isn’t for you to figure out what our authors believe. It isn’t to figure out what I believe. The goal is to figure out, more deeply, what you believe; and to be able to express it – in word and deed – in a way that is authentic, inspired, and life-giving.

It was all catchy enough to get a nice size group to register. And we are having a roller coaster ride of a week together. It's been fun. But it's also been exhausting. 

Our reading list included these books:

PZ Myers is a biologist, U of MN prof, and blogger who broke the story on this side of the border about a couple of pesky Toronto college students who took all the books on the "Bibles & Bible Studies" bookshelf in their local store and quietly reshelved them in other areas i.e. Fiction, Humour, Sexuality, Erotica, Cuisine, Parenting, Mental Disorder, Parapsychology and the Occult. They left one book standing on the Bible Study shelf: Sam Harris' "Letter to a Christian Nation" calling all reasonable people to embrace a worldview sans god.

Everywhere I go, I see people reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, or The End of Faith by Sam Harris. My hunch has been that even people who believe in God are so sick and tired of the loud-mouthed, mean-spirited, often dangerous radicals that march in the armies of both fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity that listening to a sermon by an atheist feels like taking a walk through a cool summer rain. Cleansing, somehow. Mind-clearing.

People really are ready for something different.

In a new book called Not Quite What I Was Planning people sum up their life story in six words. Time magazine highlights a couple of them in the current issue:

"Well, I thought it was funny." - Stephen Colbert

"Brought it to a boil, often." - Mario Batali

"Revenge is living well, without you." - Joyce Carol Oates

What a great exercise. Made me think about how I'd sum up my own life. Here's a first draft, summing up the first 4 decades, anyway (not to mention the truth that I believe is at the core of the Christian faith):

Robert Wuthnow is a sociologist known for his research about all things 'religious' in America. He has a new book on the market called After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion. Brian McLaren reviews it in this month's issue of Christian Century. Brian says the biggest insight Wuthnow offers is that young adults are surprisingly open to spirituality...and even to Christianity. What's cool is that this isn't just wishful thinking on the part of denominational leaders or emerging church grant writers. This is based on the best data gathering effort around. But, Brian warns, none of us ought to make the mistake of thinking that these young adults are all just going to trip back in the door once little junior comes along. Church leaders need to be listening closely - and intentionally - to what these 20 and 30-somethings have to say. Both McLaren's review and Wuthnow's book are worth a look. But here's a quick glance at some of the numbers McLaren finds especially interesting in Wuthnow's research:

For a lot of mainline congregations, November = Stewardship Campaign. So, not surprising that I got an email last night from a pastor friend saying "Help!" Apparently, he was preparing a message on Genesis 12:1ff - where God tells Abraham and Sarah that they are being "blessed to be a blessing" - and all of a sudden found himself free falling into a Joel Osteen-like vortex. How do I talk about this without beating the Prosperity Gospel drum?, my frantic friend said.

This email led me, by the way, to Joel's web site, which tells us that he "has committed his life to serving and helping every person, regardless of background and economic status, to achieve their fullest potential." God doesn't get a plug until the very last sentence of this 2 page long description of the Osteen "ministry." Jesus is MIA. Maybe God needs a better agent.

This is the last excerpt from my newest book, titled Reclaiming the E Word: Waking Up To Our Evangelical Identity, which is due out in the spring. This book reports on the results of a "deep dive" I did, along with a team of researchers from the ELCA's Dept. of Research & Evaluation, into several of the fastest growing, large congregations in my denomination. All of them lean right, theologically and otherwise, and in the current Bible wars would probably be more inclined to ask "What does the Bible say?," as folks in the literalist/traditionalist camp would do, than the question I'm more inclined to ask, which is: "What is God saying to us today through the Biblical narrative?"

There are, in fact, of bunch of things about me that would make the leaders of these big churches uncomfortable. And vice versa.

But I came away from this research project WAY more interested in what we have to learn from these folks than I am in "fixing" anything I may think they may have wrong. Each one of them has been built on the idea that to be a Christian is to be evangelical. That is, they really believe - and have organized around the idea - that we have good news to share with the world. Frankly, I was inspired by my visits to these congregations. And I very much appreciated their willingness to have us peeking over their shoulders. I believe that, if we dare to listen, they can help wake us up to some very important things.

This is an excerpt from the final chapter, which is called "Waking Up To Transformational Power":

By some estimates, there are about 200 million firearms in the U.S.; and there is a gun in somewhere between 40-50% of all American households. In this land of the free, the faithful, and the ready to fire, a 44 year old high school English teacher in Oregon has just won the first phase of a legal quest for the right to carry a gun into her classroom. On July 4th - Independence Day - this year, Kyle Cassidy's book of photographs called Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners In Their Homes hit the book stores. His web site has a sampling of photos from the book. Visit it. Pick up the book. Watch the video below (there are some great examples of his still shots in the first minute). Take a good look at this so-called "Christian" nation of ours.Cassidy says he doesn't have a political agenda. He wants people with different views to stand next to each other in a gallery filled with these photos, having a conversation. Fair enough, Kyle. As long as the other side checks their weapons at the door.

It Is Well With My Soul

I'm teaching a class all day, everyday at the Lutheran seminary in Chicago this week. The title of the class is "Being & Doing Church in the X-Box Era." In the syllabus, I introduce the class this way:

OK, here’s my bias: Even and maybe especially in the midst of our changing culture, I believe theology matters. Many people who love Jesus, care about the church, and feel called to lead the church into mission in God’s world, get impatient with talking about this stuff. They just want to do it. Some of these people are my best friends. But I believe there is a deep connection between what we do and why we do it. The more articulate we are about what we think and what we know and what we believe, the more effective our actions will become. Transformation happens when people discover new categories, concepts, and language (or rediscover old ones!) that make sense of their experience, their lives, and their world. Just ask Martin Luther about this. Or Karl Marx. Or Jon Sobrino. Or Rosemary Radford Ruether. Or Jesus. So, you want to lead God’s people in mission in the midst of this X-Box culture?!? Well, what are you going to tell them? What language will you use to help them more deeply understand what God is up to? What theological categories will you use to help provide a framework for your work together? What biblical images will you turn to for motivation, direction, and encouragement? How will you answer the hard questions when they come up? How will you make decisions in the midst of confusing situations? How will you lead?? That’s what this course is all about. What actually happens in this course, though, is entirely up to you. We’ll read a couple of different authors and books together. We’ll spend time in Scripture. We’ll do a lot of talking, trying to sort this stuff out together. But the goal isn’t for you to figure out what our authors believe. It isn’t to figure out what I believe. The goal is to figure out, more deeply, what you believe; and to be able to express it – in word and deed – in a way that is authentic, inspired, and life-giving.

It was all catchy enough to get a nice size group to register. And we are having a roller coaster ride of a week together. It's been fun. But it's also been exhausting. 

Our reading list included these books:

A Friday Funny

PZ Myers is a biologist, U of MN prof, and blogger who broke the story on this side of the border about a couple of pesky Toronto college students who took all the books on the "Bibles & Bible Studies" bookshelf in their local store and quietly reshelved them in other areas i.e. Fiction, Humour, Sexuality, Erotica, Cuisine, Parenting, Mental Disorder, Parapsychology and the Occult. They left one book standing on the Bible Study shelf: Sam Harris' "Letter to a Christian Nation" calling all reasonable people to embrace a worldview sans god.

Are We Ready?

Everywhere I go, I see people reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, or The End of Faith by Sam Harris. My hunch has been that even people who believe in God are so sick and tired of the loud-mouthed, mean-spirited, often dangerous radicals that march in the armies of both fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Christianity that listening to a sermon by an atheist feels like taking a walk through a cool summer rain. Cleansing, somehow. Mind-clearing.

People really are ready for something different.

Six Words

In a new book called Not Quite What I Was Planning people sum up their life story in six words. Time magazine highlights a couple of them in the current issue:

"Well, I thought it was funny." - Stephen Colbert

"Brought it to a boil, often." - Mario Batali

"Revenge is living well, without you." - Joyce Carol Oates

What a great exercise. Made me think about how I'd sum up my own life. Here's a first draft, summing up the first 4 decades, anyway (not to mention the truth that I believe is at the core of the Christian faith):

Religion By The Numbers

Robert Wuthnow is a sociologist known for his research about all things 'religious' in America. He has a new book on the market called After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion. Brian McLaren reviews it in this month's issue of Christian Century. Brian says the biggest insight Wuthnow offers is that young adults are surprisingly open to spirituality...and even to Christianity. What's cool is that this isn't just wishful thinking on the part of denominational leaders or emerging church grant writers. This is based on the best data gathering effort around. But, Brian warns, none of us ought to make the mistake of thinking that these young adults are all just going to trip back in the door once little junior comes along. Church leaders need to be listening closely - and intentionally - to what these 20 and 30-somethings have to say. Both McLaren's review and Wuthnow's book are worth a look. But here's a quick glance at some of the numbers McLaren finds especially interesting in Wuthnow's research:

Live Your Best Life Now...Really

For a lot of mainline congregations, November = Stewardship Campaign. So, not surprising that I got an email last night from a pastor friend saying "Help!" Apparently, he was preparing a message on Genesis 12:1ff - where God tells Abraham and Sarah that they are being "blessed to be a blessing" - and all of a sudden found himself free falling into a Joel Osteen-like vortex. How do I talk about this without beating the Prosperity Gospel drum?, my frantic friend said.

This email led me, by the way, to Joel's web site, which tells us that he "has committed his life to serving and helping every person, regardless of background and economic status, to achieve their fullest potential." God doesn't get a plug until the very last sentence of this 2 page long description of the Osteen "ministry." Jesus is MIA. Maybe God needs a better agent.

One Last Excerpt from Reclaiming The E Word

This is the last excerpt from my newest book, titled Reclaiming the E Word: Waking Up To Our Evangelical Identity, which is due out in the spring. This book reports on the results of a "deep dive" I did, along with a team of researchers from the ELCA's Dept. of Research & Evaluation, into several of the fastest growing, large congregations in my denomination. All of them lean right, theologically and otherwise, and in the current Bible wars would probably be more inclined to ask "What does the Bible say?," as folks in the literalist/traditionalist camp would do, than the question I'm more inclined to ask, which is: "What is God saying to us today through the Biblical narrative?"

There are, in fact, of bunch of things about me that would make the leaders of these big churches uncomfortable. And vice versa.

But I came away from this research project WAY more interested in what we have to learn from these folks than I am in "fixing" anything I may think they may have wrong. Each one of them has been built on the idea that to be a Christian is to be evangelical. That is, they really believe - and have organized around the idea - that we have good news to share with the world. Frankly, I was inspired by my visits to these congregations. And I very much appreciated their willingness to have us peeking over their shoulders. I believe that, if we dare to listen, they can help wake us up to some very important things.

This is an excerpt from the final chapter, which is called "Waking Up To Transformational Power":

What Was Jesus Packing Under That Robe Of His?

By some estimates, there are about 200 million firearms in the U.S.; and there is a gun in somewhere between 40-50% of all American households. In this land of the free, the faithful, and the ready to fire, a 44 year old high school English teacher in Oregon has just won the first phase of a legal quest for the right to carry a gun into her classroom. On July 4th - Independence Day - this year, Kyle Cassidy's book of photographs called Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners In Their Homes hit the book stores. His web site has a sampling of photos from the book. Visit it. Pick up the book. Watch the video below (there are some great examples of his still shots in the first minute). Take a good look at this so-called "Christian" nation of ours.Cassidy says he doesn't have a political agenda. He wants people with different views to stand next to each other in a gallery filled with these photos, having a conversation. Fair enough, Kyle. As long as the other side checks their weapons at the door.