Reclaiming The F Word

Alternative Views

So I found a sane, snotty, sacrilegious, (often) spot-on, new (to me) blog this week. Check out Letters From Kamp Krusty. The author hosts a radio show and works with Compassion International and writes things like this:

Kiss Me, I'm Presbyterian

I'm thinking about making a bunch of "Kiss Me, I'm Presbyterian" buttons to hand out to all my friends - kind of like the "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" buttons everybody wears on St. Paddy's day, whether they're Irish or not. Those wacky Calvinists went and elected themselves a 39-year old, earring'd, blogging, motorcycle riding, irreverent, funny, humble, grandson of Chinese & Filipino immigrants, pastor of a funky urban church their MODERATOR, a national office that gives him the role of representing them across the church and across the world for the next two years.

They Just Do

Thanks for the emails asking if all is ok. I've been off line more than usual lately because I'm in the middle of a busy stretch on the road. This week I've been in Seattle with about 20 remarkable college students. We've been wondering together about what it means to say that Life Matters within the context of God's loving mission to bless, save, heal, reconcile, and set free the world. And we've been exploring new ways of being and doing church. The Western Mission Cluster (a cooperative venture between Luther Seminary and Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary) asked my partners and I at A.R.E. to design and facilitate this process. Which we've done. But we have learned more than we have taught. Been given so much more than we have given away.

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:

u no who u r

The sound guys - and everybody else connected with leading worship at the last congregation I served as pastor - used to get together after the Saturday night worship service and debrief. Nothing was sacred. We critiqued the amount of reverb in the room, the tempo of the music, the flow of the liturgy, the content and tone of the sermon. (i.e., "Hey Kelly that story you told about how the guy was eating nachos at the game - it didn't work for me - I think you should say 'hot dogs' - more people eat hot dogs.") It was all up for grabs because we were all committed to making sure nothing got in the way of Jesus coming to people. It also helped create a level playing field. Jesus was Lord in that congregation, at least back then. Not the pastor or the sound guy or the crabbiest person in the room. But even I never imagined the kind of immediate, broad based feedback that has become possible now that everybody knows how to send text messages.

Three Cheers for a Quixotic Church

I spent this past weekend in Daphin, a little town in the Manitoba Northern Ontario Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. Dauphin is about a four hour drive from Winnipeg, through some of the flattest terrain I've ever seen. The purpose of this adventure was to present a day long "renewal event" for congregational leaders who had gathered for a rather quixotic synod convention.

Kids Today

LutheranChik, whose beautifully crafted posts from daily church & home life can't help but warm you up, rarely says anything I actually disagree with...but it happened last week! On March 31 she said that a recent excursion into the world of social networking led her to conclude that kids growing up today are doing it in a world that is worse off than the one she and I grew up in back in the old days. (OK, the 70's.) Maybe she was overstating it or just had a singularly bad experience online. On the other hand, I can understand why somebody would feel that way...I've wandered around FaceBook & MySpace, too...I have three kids (21, 19, 15)...I know there are a lot of crappy things going on out there today. But I think this sentiment is wrong. I left a comment to that effect before I left. Here's what I said:

Rock & Roll Revival

I'm not surprised anymore when Jesus shows up in surprising places, working through unlikely people, doing unexpected things. Have you seen, for example, Kid Rock's newest video?

Are You Down With It?

According to Eileen Lindner, editor of the yearbook for the National Council of Churches and an unapologetic number-cruncher, one of the primary reasons the mainline has struggled so much over the past few decades is as simple as national demographics. For example, the regions of the country where the mainline has traditionally thrived (north, midwest, east) have been the hardest hit economically, leading to a population drain. Also, the builder and boomer generations, who filled mainline churches in the middle of the last century, are getting older. Eileen says, if it seems like mainline churches are dying, it's at least partly because...well...our members are dying (from a presentation delivered at the Lutheran Theological School in Philadelphia, spring 2007). OK, I'll buy it. But the mainline church is not the only institution ever to face a crisis caused by changing demographics. According to an article in The Washington Post today, colleges and universities across the U.S. are a few years away from a demographic crisis of their own:

Push Hard

This is a shout out to all of you church leaders out there (ordained, elected, or Holy Spirit anointed right there in the pew): Here's an important lesson from the campaign trail today. According to The Nation, Obama's win in South Carolina was anything but a "black" thing. He's got an interesting group of folks in Butte, Montana, a battered old mining town that doesn't "come much whiter or more hope-resistant," excited about him, too. And here's why: