Though I have no party affiliation, I come from a family with politics in the blood and I'm a bit of a political junkie. To be honest, I think I find the maneuvering and strategy more interesting than the issues and candidates themselves.
This year I've gotten kind of lost in the news about the campaign, though. I've found myself listening to the talking heads on cable news spewing their foolishness until the wee hours of the morning. I've been checking polls at least daily--Gallup, Rasmussen, FOX, Politico, etc. I've been paying attention to trends in battleground states ("Oo, look! Some polls have Obama closing the gap in North Carolina, but he's still got a huge gap in rural areas. Wow! Romney's behind in several Republican strongholds but has a great shot and taking traditionally Democratic New Hampshire." You get the idea.). Maybe I'm caught up in the drama of it. Maybe deep inside I think I should get a job as a campaign manager--I sure do a lot of Monday morning armchair quarterbacking.
Well, this week I quit cold turkey. I shut off the idiot box--no more opinions on the campaign from Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarbrough, Ed Schultz, Greta VanSusteren, or any of the others. They will have to earn their ratings from someone else. No more electoral college maps on my computer or presidential tracking polls on my phone. No more touchscreens on NBC with county-by-county tracking in battleground states. No more YouTube videos of speech bloopers.
I'm going to bed at 9:30, reading a little bit, and going to sleep around 10pm. I'm waking up earlier and getting a productive start to my day.
Guess what? I'm in a much better mood. I'm less sleepy. I'm less prone to cynicism and snarky-ness. I'm reading, praying, and working more. I'm more efficient.
I fully intend to stay up and watch the results come in on election night. I plan to vote. The day afterwards, I plan to go back to work building a city made not with hands. I will be equally joyful no matter the results. I am a citizen of a Kingdom that will not pass away.
Anyone else want to join me on a presidential campaign media fast?
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Monday, September 24, 2012
Uber-basic Friendship Evangelism
This Sunday's sermon will be about the Gospel text for the week, which is tough and complicated. It begins with Jesus telling the disciples to leave alone someone who is casting out demons in his name, then telling them that if anyone causes a child to stumble it would be better for a him to have a stone tied around his neck and be thrown into the ocean, then telling them to cut off hands and gauge out eyes that cause offense, then telling them to be salted with fire.
Where's the thread? I'm going to talk a little bit about the urgency and refusal to compromise Jesus calls us to, the passion for the Kingdom found in all these sayings. Jesus seems to be urging us: "Care! This stuff matters! Don't just let it slide! Don't give up easy! Don't cut corners! Don't get apathetic! Re-light the fire!"
At the same time, I keep thinking about all the statistics that I've been hearing lately about how often folks invite people to church. As I wrote in an earlier blog, Mike Slaughter says that United Methodists invite someone to every 38 years. MFUMC's youth pastor, Jared Parker, was just sharing with me today that a recent study says 97% of churchgoers never invite someone to church. Again, I don't know about statistics, but this seems awfully apathetic to me.
Adam Hamilton teaches that before any church can ever have any effectiveness in evangelism, it needs to settle three issues. First, we need to believe that people need Jesus. Second, we need to believe that people find Jesus through the church. Third, we need to believe that our church helps people to find Jesus. There are many reasons that church people may doubt any of these. People may not want to seem like fundamentalists or condemn others to hell, so they become complacent about their belief that people need Jesus. People may believe that Jesus is terrific, but believe that church is an unnecessary institution and that people can walk with Jesus all by themselves. People may believe in Jesus and believe in church in theory, but think that the particular church they go to is so conflicted or unhealthy or boring that they would be embarrassed to bring a friend to visit. We need to settle these issues, and the more quickly, the better (I intend to address them this Sunday, as a matter of fact).
If we care, then we will be excited to find opportunities to gently and joyfully let people know that we have a church that would open its arms to them. I invite people to church all the time. They are less likely to come when I ask, because I'm a preacher and it sounds like a sales job coming from me. But there is no more helpful way to connect people with a a community that will help them to discover Jesus' love for them then for a church person to invite another person to visit church with them.
Years ago, UM Communications had a media drive that offered a very helpful way for folks to think about who to invite to church. They called it the FRAN plan. They suggested that each church member think of a Friend, Relative, Acquaintance, and Neighbor to pray for and to invite to church. I've often thought they should add Kids to the list--a FRANK plan wouldn't rhyme, but I know many people who know Jesus today because someone besides a parent brought them to church during childhood.
There it is! Evangelism 101.
1. Care! The Gospel matters! (but don't be obnoxious about it)
2. People need Jesus, people find Jesus in the church, people find Jesus in my church.
3. Have a plan for identifying folks to pray for and invite to church (friends, relatives, acquaintances, neighbors, and kids are great prospects).
Where's the thread? I'm going to talk a little bit about the urgency and refusal to compromise Jesus calls us to, the passion for the Kingdom found in all these sayings. Jesus seems to be urging us: "Care! This stuff matters! Don't just let it slide! Don't give up easy! Don't cut corners! Don't get apathetic! Re-light the fire!"
At the same time, I keep thinking about all the statistics that I've been hearing lately about how often folks invite people to church. As I wrote in an earlier blog, Mike Slaughter says that United Methodists invite someone to every 38 years. MFUMC's youth pastor, Jared Parker, was just sharing with me today that a recent study says 97% of churchgoers never invite someone to church. Again, I don't know about statistics, but this seems awfully apathetic to me.
Adam Hamilton teaches that before any church can ever have any effectiveness in evangelism, it needs to settle three issues. First, we need to believe that people need Jesus. Second, we need to believe that people find Jesus through the church. Third, we need to believe that our church helps people to find Jesus. There are many reasons that church people may doubt any of these. People may not want to seem like fundamentalists or condemn others to hell, so they become complacent about their belief that people need Jesus. People may believe that Jesus is terrific, but believe that church is an unnecessary institution and that people can walk with Jesus all by themselves. People may believe in Jesus and believe in church in theory, but think that the particular church they go to is so conflicted or unhealthy or boring that they would be embarrassed to bring a friend to visit. We need to settle these issues, and the more quickly, the better (I intend to address them this Sunday, as a matter of fact).
If we care, then we will be excited to find opportunities to gently and joyfully let people know that we have a church that would open its arms to them. I invite people to church all the time. They are less likely to come when I ask, because I'm a preacher and it sounds like a sales job coming from me. But there is no more helpful way to connect people with a a community that will help them to discover Jesus' love for them then for a church person to invite another person to visit church with them.
Years ago, UM Communications had a media drive that offered a very helpful way for folks to think about who to invite to church. They called it the FRAN plan. They suggested that each church member think of a Friend, Relative, Acquaintance, and Neighbor to pray for and to invite to church. I've often thought they should add Kids to the list--a FRANK plan wouldn't rhyme, but I know many people who know Jesus today because someone besides a parent brought them to church during childhood.
There it is! Evangelism 101.
1. Care! The Gospel matters! (but don't be obnoxious about it)
2. People need Jesus, people find Jesus in the church, people find Jesus in my church.
3. Have a plan for identifying folks to pray for and invite to church (friends, relatives, acquaintances, neighbors, and kids are great prospects).
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Pastoral Prayer based on Mk. 9:30-37
Holy God:
We call you father, and what a joy it is that the creator of all things would make us his children. You’ve given us your spirit, adopted us into your family, and given us the ability to cry out “Abba Father.” Help us to approach you with the heart of little children running into the arms of a loving and strong family. Help us to find a welcome place in your home, a refuge and an always listening ear. Help us to see the joy in your eyes when you look at us with the affection of a father.
When we get lost in the spirit of this age, when we forget we are children in your house, when we try to act grown up, puffed up, filled up with ourselves, lost an the effort to move ahead and take care of business, to get everything done that needs to be done, to et the weight of the world rest on our shoulders--remind us of who we are in your eyes. Help us to rest in you, to quit our striving and to learn to love and be loved.
Holy Father, you see your world and all its struggles. We ask you to bring peace among the nations, to bring justice to the oppressed, to bring wisdom to conflicts that cause confusion and misunderstanding, and to bring reconciliation between enemies. Each person in this world is a person you loved enough to send your son to die. And so we ask that you would do what may be impossible to people and to bring peace among your creation.
Open your heart and your word today. Help us to hear from you. Make us new. Amen.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Book Review: Islam: A Short History, by Karen Armstrong
As I write (September 2012), the world is currently whipped up with Islamic protests against inflammatory media from the West, the recent killing of a US ambassador by terrorists, and renewed interest in the beliefs and practices of Muslims. I'm a pastor, and I'm hearing those questions again: "What do Muslims believe?," "Do Muslims want to convert or kill all non-Muslims?," "What do those people have against us?" I prefer the questions better than some of the direct statements I hear from time to time. Sometimes people express the feeling that the US should just turn the whole Middle East into a parking lot (a solution not unlike the supposed plan of Muslims to wipe out people unlike themselves). I've been trying to help folks see our struggle within our situation differently for my whole adult life.
This summer, during a time when the focus seemed to be far from these concerns, I did a very good thing by reading Karen Armstrong's book on the history of Islam.
I've often thought that the best way to understand a situation is to understand how it got to be the way it is. Folks I talk to are generally unaware that Muslims and Jews have gotten along much better than Christians and either Jews or Muslims for most of their shared history. They usually also unaware that for most of Islam's history they have been the seat of progressive civilization, and that the West only caught up and passed them during the Enlightenment period. America is a new country and has no old architecture, so we Americans often fail to understand how cultures have long memories and can still be motivated by things that happened a thousand years ago. Heck, we've basically forgotten the Alamo.
Armstrong's book was so good at getting to the heart of Islamic history and placing it in context with its relationship to the rest of the world. She helped me develop a deep appreciation of historical causality--how some things I knew had happened came to happen the way they did, and how they affect things in the modern world.
I wish everyone could read this book, if for no other reason than to get a true sense of how diverse and conflicted Islam is. The questions that come to me about Islam usually assume that Islam is one thing and that whatever one Muslim says about Islam is true for the beliefs of all, that whatever one Muslim does demonstrates the way all Muslims are. It's one thing to say in a general way, "Oh, but there are many more moderate Muslims than there are radicals." It's another thing to be walked through all the names, beliefs, practices, political arrangements, and personalities of the various folks who have struggled for the soul of the faith for the last 1500 years. Their history is not unlike Christian history--they have had many empires and governments that have been very different from each other--some more democratic and egalitarian, some more totalitarian, some more progressive and intellectual, some more regressive and reactionary, etc., etc. These folks have been of many different ethnic backgrounds and have appropriated Islam into their culture and many different ways. Mongols, Turks, Indians, Arabs, North Africans, Persians, and many others have dominated Islamic culture at various points and have created brands of Islam that were very different from each other. The first blood was shed over the leadership of Islam only a generation after Muhammed himself, and the rift that arose from that killing has not yet been resolved.
Armstrong never makes excuses for those elements of Islam that threaten cultural progress or contribute to violence. But she does a terrific job of contextualizing and creating understanding. The theme I perhaps found most helpful was her understanding of the challenge Islamic nations have had getting up to speed with Western cultural and technological advances. She argues that both Muslim and Western nations were mostly agrarian societies in the 16th century, and Islamic lands had aristocratic classes that were actually much more advanced than the West was at that time (we should remember that the Ottoman Turks conquered the Byzantine Empire only a year after Columbus sailed the ocean blue and more than twenty years before the Reformation began). From the 1700s onward, the West made extraordinary strides in science, religion, agriculture, philosophy, and every other field. Democratic governments were formed and open societies were created. Religious superstition no longer dominated the cultural conversation, and social institutions such as the family were radically revised.
These changes were internally driven within Western culture. They were full of conflict at every turn and elements of Western culture have reacted against them and continue to attempt to return to an idealized past. The growing pains of modernity have caused and continue to cause violence within Western culture. It should be no surprise, then, the Islamic culture should react when it is drawn into a progressive culture that has been imposed from the outside rather than developed from within. It should be no surprise that the masses would revolt and react, especially since Western reforms in Islamic lands are often championed by elites and the benefits of advances are not evenly distributed. Islam is suffering the adolescence of modernity just as western culture struggled with tenements, child labor, widespread corruption, revolutions and civil wars, and all kinds of problems in the 19th century. We have our fundamentalism, too, and our society progresses and reacts all the time.
Again, Armstrong clearly doesn't think that Islamic reactionaries are justified. She wants to see cultural progress, democratic reforms, gender equality, etc. around the world. She helps us see how the turmoil in the Middle East is a painful part of the process of a global culture coming into being when a significant portion of the world created the reforms and advances that will determine the world's collective culture for. We should not be surprised that many Muslims resist (even violently), when most westerners are ambivalent about modernity. I certainly have my own concerns (cf Karl Barth following WWI)!
I'll have to read the book a couple more times to get all the empires and religious movements straight, to be sure. Considering its depth and the remarkable ground it covers, the book is very accessible and compact (about 200 pages). Many people I meet want to understand why Egyptians riot violently because of an obscure movie, and hate the US because the movie exists though Americans would have never heard of the movie if not for the riots. They may have very nice Muslim doctors who seem very different than the people they see on the news from their doctors' home countries. They may not understand what the difference between a Sunni and a Shi'ite might be, though they can remember when Protestants and Roman Catholics killed each other. Armstrong's book is very helpful in understanding the texture of differences between Muslims by demonstrating how those differences developed. Islam has a prominent place in the world's challenges and is in a period of rapid growth and transformation. The West's relationship with the Islamic world will certainly play a major role in determining what the future will hold. We live in a democracy, so our opinions truly matter, whether they are based on the truth or not. We owe it to the world and to our children to know something meaningful and true about 1.2 billion people with whom we share the planet.
This summer, during a time when the focus seemed to be far from these concerns, I did a very good thing by reading Karen Armstrong's book on the history of Islam.
I've often thought that the best way to understand a situation is to understand how it got to be the way it is. Folks I talk to are generally unaware that Muslims and Jews have gotten along much better than Christians and either Jews or Muslims for most of their shared history. They usually also unaware that for most of Islam's history they have been the seat of progressive civilization, and that the West only caught up and passed them during the Enlightenment period. America is a new country and has no old architecture, so we Americans often fail to understand how cultures have long memories and can still be motivated by things that happened a thousand years ago. Heck, we've basically forgotten the Alamo.
Armstrong's book was so good at getting to the heart of Islamic history and placing it in context with its relationship to the rest of the world. She helped me develop a deep appreciation of historical causality--how some things I knew had happened came to happen the way they did, and how they affect things in the modern world.
I wish everyone could read this book, if for no other reason than to get a true sense of how diverse and conflicted Islam is. The questions that come to me about Islam usually assume that Islam is one thing and that whatever one Muslim says about Islam is true for the beliefs of all, that whatever one Muslim does demonstrates the way all Muslims are. It's one thing to say in a general way, "Oh, but there are many more moderate Muslims than there are radicals." It's another thing to be walked through all the names, beliefs, practices, political arrangements, and personalities of the various folks who have struggled for the soul of the faith for the last 1500 years. Their history is not unlike Christian history--they have had many empires and governments that have been very different from each other--some more democratic and egalitarian, some more totalitarian, some more progressive and intellectual, some more regressive and reactionary, etc., etc. These folks have been of many different ethnic backgrounds and have appropriated Islam into their culture and many different ways. Mongols, Turks, Indians, Arabs, North Africans, Persians, and many others have dominated Islamic culture at various points and have created brands of Islam that were very different from each other. The first blood was shed over the leadership of Islam only a generation after Muhammed himself, and the rift that arose from that killing has not yet been resolved.
Armstrong never makes excuses for those elements of Islam that threaten cultural progress or contribute to violence. But she does a terrific job of contextualizing and creating understanding. The theme I perhaps found most helpful was her understanding of the challenge Islamic nations have had getting up to speed with Western cultural and technological advances. She argues that both Muslim and Western nations were mostly agrarian societies in the 16th century, and Islamic lands had aristocratic classes that were actually much more advanced than the West was at that time (we should remember that the Ottoman Turks conquered the Byzantine Empire only a year after Columbus sailed the ocean blue and more than twenty years before the Reformation began). From the 1700s onward, the West made extraordinary strides in science, religion, agriculture, philosophy, and every other field. Democratic governments were formed and open societies were created. Religious superstition no longer dominated the cultural conversation, and social institutions such as the family were radically revised.
These changes were internally driven within Western culture. They were full of conflict at every turn and elements of Western culture have reacted against them and continue to attempt to return to an idealized past. The growing pains of modernity have caused and continue to cause violence within Western culture. It should be no surprise, then, the Islamic culture should react when it is drawn into a progressive culture that has been imposed from the outside rather than developed from within. It should be no surprise that the masses would revolt and react, especially since Western reforms in Islamic lands are often championed by elites and the benefits of advances are not evenly distributed. Islam is suffering the adolescence of modernity just as western culture struggled with tenements, child labor, widespread corruption, revolutions and civil wars, and all kinds of problems in the 19th century. We have our fundamentalism, too, and our society progresses and reacts all the time.
Again, Armstrong clearly doesn't think that Islamic reactionaries are justified. She wants to see cultural progress, democratic reforms, gender equality, etc. around the world. She helps us see how the turmoil in the Middle East is a painful part of the process of a global culture coming into being when a significant portion of the world created the reforms and advances that will determine the world's collective culture for. We should not be surprised that many Muslims resist (even violently), when most westerners are ambivalent about modernity. I certainly have my own concerns (cf Karl Barth following WWI)!
I'll have to read the book a couple more times to get all the empires and religious movements straight, to be sure. Considering its depth and the remarkable ground it covers, the book is very accessible and compact (about 200 pages). Many people I meet want to understand why Egyptians riot violently because of an obscure movie, and hate the US because the movie exists though Americans would have never heard of the movie if not for the riots. They may have very nice Muslim doctors who seem very different than the people they see on the news from their doctors' home countries. They may not understand what the difference between a Sunni and a Shi'ite might be, though they can remember when Protestants and Roman Catholics killed each other. Armstrong's book is very helpful in understanding the texture of differences between Muslims by demonstrating how those differences developed. Islam has a prominent place in the world's challenges and is in a period of rapid growth and transformation. The West's relationship with the Islamic world will certainly play a major role in determining what the future will hold. We live in a democracy, so our opinions truly matter, whether they are based on the truth or not. We owe it to the world and to our children to know something meaningful and true about 1.2 billion people with whom we share the planet.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
The "Jesus Had a Wife" Coptic Scrap
The news and Twitter-verse seem full of the astounding revelation that a Harvard professor has unearthed a 4th century papyrus fragment with an incomplete phrase referring to "Jesus's wife." I heard about it on both TV and the radio this morning. It's a rare day that 4th century Coptic texts get so much press. Apparently, the news folks got the idea that it might create some controversy and that it might mean that Jesus did, in fact, have a wife. I thought I would give some of my thoughts on the subject.
The scrap his not yet been completely verified. It might be a fake. Please don't throw your Bible in the garbage or throw your money away on the next mediocre novel only to find out the scrap is inauthentic. Even if it does come from the 4th century, it's so small that I would want to know about the full translation before I drew any conclusions about its meaning--for example, Jesus was a very common name, so I wonder how we know that the text is about our Jesus. Another thing--I don't know Coptic, but Greek is a cognate and the same word means "woman" and "wife." I'm curious about how the scrap has enough context to know how it should be translated when it does not have a complete sentence. Maybe these issues are addressed in an academic article, but the popular news stories give little indication that these old scraps in dead languages always come with these kinds of uncertainties.
I have news, friends--there is no news here. In recent years lots of people have made a lot of money and have made names for themselves (Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels, particularly) selling the idea that early Christianity was actually many Christianities with many texts, and that the Gospels we have in our Bible only represent the strain of Christianity that won. The general public has gotten the idea that lots of other texts were equally representative of ways early Jesus followers thought of Jesus, and that these texts were suppressed by the orthodox strain. Every time a new scrap or text comes to light, folks think that some amazing revelation has been made that undermines the canonical Gospels in some way, that the "lost text" was hidden away or suppressed or something.
This is, to use a term my grandmother used to say when I was a child and she didn't use the kind of terminology she adopted when I was older, "horsefeathers." Here's why.
There has been no scheme to cover up the diversity of Christian opinion or the reality that groups of people used the name of Jesus but believed things very different than the faith of the canonical Gospels. The fact that there were people talking about Jesus who believed something different about him is recorded in the New Testament itself. Even in the second century, Christian groups were determining what made for authentic Christianity and what was not the faith of the people who actually followed Jesus' teachings. The early church father Irenaeus recorded the teachings of many gnostic heretics in his book refuting these teachings (this work is usually called Against All Heresies, and was the subject of my college senior thesis). Every New Testament or Church History student in undergraduate religion studies or seminary gets bored to death learning what the Gnostics, Ebionites, Montanists, Nestorians, Apollinarians, and dozens of other splinter groups believed. There's no conspiracy. We've always known there were groups whose beliefs were outside the mainstream. What's new is the idea that there was no central faith of Jesus and the apostles from which these groups diverged.
Clearly, there were documents that were widely used in early Christianity whose scriptural reliability was in question for awhile. The earliest list of New Testament books that matches our list was the Muratorian Canon of 180 AD. There were many other lists that did not include some of our New Testament books (Jude, 2 Peter, Revelation were particularly in dispute). Some other very early works often were included in early canons and did not end up in our Bible. These include the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, and the Epistles of Clement. In the case of the Gospels, scholars agree that all four canonical Gospels were complete by around 100 AD and were circulating together in the same order that we have them within a few decades.
Here's the thing--no matter how you slice it, the scrap that's making news, if authentic, was written at least three hundred years after Jesus died and was raised, a couple hundred years after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were complete and circulating together, over a hundred and fifty years after the first canon that matches our canon was compiled, over a hundred years after Irenaeus explained clearly how groups outside the Christian mainstream differed from Christians descending from the faith of the apostles, and roughly the same time as the Council of Nicaea was codifying the creed and the finalized canon we continue to use. Incidentally, the complete Greek manuscript of the entire Bible best respected by translators of modern Bible versions (Codex Sinaiticus) was written around the same time this scrap was supposed to be made, as well.
I find it preposterous that anyone would consider a fourth century scrap written on papyrus in Coptic mentioning Jesus' wife as evidence that any significant portion of early Christians believed Jesus was married. In my opinion (and Lord knows I'm not a Harvard professor, so take it with a grain of salt), the scrap's only significance, if authentic, would be to teach us something about the beliefs of Coptic gnostic sectarians from a direct source rather than polemical writings of their orthodox contemporaries.
I bet that wouldn't wouldn't make the evening news, though.
The scrap his not yet been completely verified. It might be a fake. Please don't throw your Bible in the garbage or throw your money away on the next mediocre novel only to find out the scrap is inauthentic. Even if it does come from the 4th century, it's so small that I would want to know about the full translation before I drew any conclusions about its meaning--for example, Jesus was a very common name, so I wonder how we know that the text is about our Jesus. Another thing--I don't know Coptic, but Greek is a cognate and the same word means "woman" and "wife." I'm curious about how the scrap has enough context to know how it should be translated when it does not have a complete sentence. Maybe these issues are addressed in an academic article, but the popular news stories give little indication that these old scraps in dead languages always come with these kinds of uncertainties.
I have news, friends--there is no news here. In recent years lots of people have made a lot of money and have made names for themselves (Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels, particularly) selling the idea that early Christianity was actually many Christianities with many texts, and that the Gospels we have in our Bible only represent the strain of Christianity that won. The general public has gotten the idea that lots of other texts were equally representative of ways early Jesus followers thought of Jesus, and that these texts were suppressed by the orthodox strain. Every time a new scrap or text comes to light, folks think that some amazing revelation has been made that undermines the canonical Gospels in some way, that the "lost text" was hidden away or suppressed or something.
This is, to use a term my grandmother used to say when I was a child and she didn't use the kind of terminology she adopted when I was older, "horsefeathers." Here's why.
There has been no scheme to cover up the diversity of Christian opinion or the reality that groups of people used the name of Jesus but believed things very different than the faith of the canonical Gospels. The fact that there were people talking about Jesus who believed something different about him is recorded in the New Testament itself. Even in the second century, Christian groups were determining what made for authentic Christianity and what was not the faith of the people who actually followed Jesus' teachings. The early church father Irenaeus recorded the teachings of many gnostic heretics in his book refuting these teachings (this work is usually called Against All Heresies, and was the subject of my college senior thesis). Every New Testament or Church History student in undergraduate religion studies or seminary gets bored to death learning what the Gnostics, Ebionites, Montanists, Nestorians, Apollinarians, and dozens of other splinter groups believed. There's no conspiracy. We've always known there were groups whose beliefs were outside the mainstream. What's new is the idea that there was no central faith of Jesus and the apostles from which these groups diverged.
Clearly, there were documents that were widely used in early Christianity whose scriptural reliability was in question for awhile. The earliest list of New Testament books that matches our list was the Muratorian Canon of 180 AD. There were many other lists that did not include some of our New Testament books (Jude, 2 Peter, Revelation were particularly in dispute). Some other very early works often were included in early canons and did not end up in our Bible. These include the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, and the Epistles of Clement. In the case of the Gospels, scholars agree that all four canonical Gospels were complete by around 100 AD and were circulating together in the same order that we have them within a few decades.
Here's the thing--no matter how you slice it, the scrap that's making news, if authentic, was written at least three hundred years after Jesus died and was raised, a couple hundred years after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were complete and circulating together, over a hundred and fifty years after the first canon that matches our canon was compiled, over a hundred years after Irenaeus explained clearly how groups outside the Christian mainstream differed from Christians descending from the faith of the apostles, and roughly the same time as the Council of Nicaea was codifying the creed and the finalized canon we continue to use. Incidentally, the complete Greek manuscript of the entire Bible best respected by translators of modern Bible versions (Codex Sinaiticus) was written around the same time this scrap was supposed to be made, as well.
I find it preposterous that anyone would consider a fourth century scrap written on papyrus in Coptic mentioning Jesus' wife as evidence that any significant portion of early Christians believed Jesus was married. In my opinion (and Lord knows I'm not a Harvard professor, so take it with a grain of salt), the scrap's only significance, if authentic, would be to teach us something about the beliefs of Coptic gnostic sectarians from a direct source rather than polemical writings of their orthodox contemporaries.
I bet that wouldn't wouldn't make the evening news, though.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Church Cell Phone Etiquette
People have been gathering for worship for thousands of years and have developed all kinds of spoken and unspoken norms for behavior in church. It's only been a few years that everyone has had a cellphone with them wherever they go, and even more recent that most people have a smartphone in worship. Here are some suggested guidelines for how these and other devices should be used in church.
First, please silence your cellphone so that it will not ring during prayers, silence, sermons, etc. Jazzy ringtones are especially distracting for fellow worshippers trying to focus on a sense of the holy.
That said, please be gracious when your neighbor forgets to silence a phone. Most of us have failed in this regard. To my shame, my phone rang once while I was serving communion. Perhaps we should be grateful to our neighbor whose phone goes off during worship if we are reminded to silence our own phones and therefore avoid embarrassment.
Second, it's probably a bad idea to browse email, Facebook, and Twitter during worship. We live in a time in which our attention is terribly dispersed. A little focus during an hour set aside for God might be very helpful to all of us.
Third, an electronic Bible is just as much a Bible as a leather bound gilded Bible is Bible. There is nothing wrong with using a version of a Bible on a phone or iPad in church. These days, many preachers use iPads and even cell phones to read scripture when they preach. Electronic Bibles give the opportunity to make notes, compare versions, define words, and use lots of other resources. Once upon a time, religious texts were considered so holy that they could only be read from scrolls. Christianity grew quickly in part because early Christians used the more portable codex (bound books like the ones we use today) which allowed missionaries to easily take the scriptures all over the world. We would be foolish to fail to follow their example and use whatever resources we have available to make the Bible accessible.
Fourth, there is no reason we ought not use electronic devices to connect our worship to the larger world. Two very easy ways to do this include checking in on Facebook when we go to church, and tweeting sermon quotes or other reflections while we are in church. I suggest Millbrook First UMC folks who use Twitter use the hashtag #mfumc whenever you tweet about the church.
We live in an exciting time when we have a very special opportunity to give witness to our faith and get the message of the Gospel to far more people than would ever actually go to worship in a church building. We can evangelize and expand the scope of our congregations' ministries significantly with very little effort. Who knows that something as simple as a check-in or a tweet might open the door for a conversation that would lead someone to come to faith in Christ?
First, please silence your cellphone so that it will not ring during prayers, silence, sermons, etc. Jazzy ringtones are especially distracting for fellow worshippers trying to focus on a sense of the holy.
That said, please be gracious when your neighbor forgets to silence a phone. Most of us have failed in this regard. To my shame, my phone rang once while I was serving communion. Perhaps we should be grateful to our neighbor whose phone goes off during worship if we are reminded to silence our own phones and therefore avoid embarrassment.
Second, it's probably a bad idea to browse email, Facebook, and Twitter during worship. We live in a time in which our attention is terribly dispersed. A little focus during an hour set aside for God might be very helpful to all of us.
Third, an electronic Bible is just as much a Bible as a leather bound gilded Bible is Bible. There is nothing wrong with using a version of a Bible on a phone or iPad in church. These days, many preachers use iPads and even cell phones to read scripture when they preach. Electronic Bibles give the opportunity to make notes, compare versions, define words, and use lots of other resources. Once upon a time, religious texts were considered so holy that they could only be read from scrolls. Christianity grew quickly in part because early Christians used the more portable codex (bound books like the ones we use today) which allowed missionaries to easily take the scriptures all over the world. We would be foolish to fail to follow their example and use whatever resources we have available to make the Bible accessible.
Fourth, there is no reason we ought not use electronic devices to connect our worship to the larger world. Two very easy ways to do this include checking in on Facebook when we go to church, and tweeting sermon quotes or other reflections while we are in church. I suggest Millbrook First UMC folks who use Twitter use the hashtag #mfumc whenever you tweet about the church.
We live in an exciting time when we have a very special opportunity to give witness to our faith and get the message of the Gospel to far more people than would ever actually go to worship in a church building. We can evangelize and expand the scope of our congregations' ministries significantly with very little effort. Who knows that something as simple as a check-in or a tweet might open the door for a conversation that would lead someone to come to faith in Christ?
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Go to Your Brother
I was once consulting with my former Senior Minister, Lawson Bryan, about some situation I've since forgotten. I do remember what he taught me through it, though. I had sought his advice about a potentially sticky situation, he had advised me to talk to the person involved, which I had done, and the thing had been resolved. When I reported what had happened to him, Dr. Bryan said, "Direct, face-to-face communication is always best."
That's how he treated me, and it made all the difference. There were times I made mistakes significant enough that I needed correction. He always spoke with me one-on-one, affirmed me, and helped me to do better. He always showed grace and helped me save face.
I've come to believe that this capacity to deal with potential or real conflict in a graceful, direct manner may be the single most important leadership ability.
I can look back on my failures and see that many of them could have worked out completely differently if I had understood this earlier. Years ago, I served a church with an employee whose position was set up in such a way that she could not effectively serve the church. She also created tremendous conflict in the congregation through irresponsible use of information she learned in her job capacity. It was clear she could not continue in the position. I was sharing my concerns about her with a wise church member, who advised me to go and talk to her, to see if she could be convinced to leave honorably. He felt that she wouldn't mind an opportunity to step out gracefully. Instead, I took my concerns to the personel committee. The committee let her go, and great heartache ensued. I failed to have the courage to do the right thing, the best thing, and the loving thing.
I asked Karl Stegall about this issue when I interviewed him for my doctoral project. I wanted to know how to address concerns in order to help interns grow while being sure not to make them feel criticized or crush their spirits. He said that he always felt that communication about concerns should be immediate, direct, and bathed in a lot of love and grace.
My guess is that many, if not most struggles and conflicts in churches, families, and institutions have a history that begins with a problem that leads to a decision from a leader whether or not to speak directly to the person responsible or bring the issue to others. Many, if not most problems that blow up and become irreparable have a history that includes a decision to circumvent the person who most needs to be addressed.
Why is this so hard for us? I think it's because most people lack the courage to look someone in the eye and share a concern. People are often shocked when we share concerns with them directly. They are often relieved when concerns are addressed in a way that helps them to be more successful without being embarrassed. I think the reason that things get out of hand in these situations is that when concerns are addressed to a larger audience, people are humiliated and feel the need to strike back in order to save face. We must always defend each other's dignity, especially people who are in the wrong.
Isn't this what Jesus taught us? Keep the circle small. Confront in private; confront in love. Only bring others into the situation when there is no other way.
That's how he treated me, and it made all the difference. There were times I made mistakes significant enough that I needed correction. He always spoke with me one-on-one, affirmed me, and helped me to do better. He always showed grace and helped me save face.
I've come to believe that this capacity to deal with potential or real conflict in a graceful, direct manner may be the single most important leadership ability.
I can look back on my failures and see that many of them could have worked out completely differently if I had understood this earlier. Years ago, I served a church with an employee whose position was set up in such a way that she could not effectively serve the church. She also created tremendous conflict in the congregation through irresponsible use of information she learned in her job capacity. It was clear she could not continue in the position. I was sharing my concerns about her with a wise church member, who advised me to go and talk to her, to see if she could be convinced to leave honorably. He felt that she wouldn't mind an opportunity to step out gracefully. Instead, I took my concerns to the personel committee. The committee let her go, and great heartache ensued. I failed to have the courage to do the right thing, the best thing, and the loving thing.
I asked Karl Stegall about this issue when I interviewed him for my doctoral project. I wanted to know how to address concerns in order to help interns grow while being sure not to make them feel criticized or crush their spirits. He said that he always felt that communication about concerns should be immediate, direct, and bathed in a lot of love and grace.
My guess is that many, if not most struggles and conflicts in churches, families, and institutions have a history that begins with a problem that leads to a decision from a leader whether or not to speak directly to the person responsible or bring the issue to others. Many, if not most problems that blow up and become irreparable have a history that includes a decision to circumvent the person who most needs to be addressed.
Why is this so hard for us? I think it's because most people lack the courage to look someone in the eye and share a concern. People are often shocked when we share concerns with them directly. They are often relieved when concerns are addressed in a way that helps them to be more successful without being embarrassed. I think the reason that things get out of hand in these situations is that when concerns are addressed to a larger audience, people are humiliated and feel the need to strike back in order to save face. We must always defend each other's dignity, especially people who are in the wrong.
Isn't this what Jesus taught us? Keep the circle small. Confront in private; confront in love. Only bring others into the situation when there is no other way.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Every 38 Years?
I've encountered a statistic here and there recently, variously attributed to Mike Slaughter, Barna, some church consultant named somebody-Anderson, and several others (it's in the UM Reporter and everything): The average United Methodist invites someone to church every 38 years. I would love for someone to fact check that figure for me. It sonds like preacher numbers to me, and preachers would be thrown in the slammer if they tried to do accounting the way they use church numbers. I'd love to know where to find a verifiable study that created this startling figure.
Even if it's based on goofy quantitative research of some sort or another, it does kinda feel like there must be some there there. It's very easy to find studies that suggest that most people who come to church come because a person other than a pastor invites them (most numbers for those studies are above 80%).
It makes me wonder. See, I sold knives through in-home demonstrations when I was in college. I certainly didn't think that everyone would buy. I knew, even when I was 19-years-old, that I would have to persevere through a certain number of rejections before someone would be interested in what I was selling.
I first came to the United Methodist Church to take a job, but I stayed and became a pastor because I believe the UMC is the best one and the denomination that combines the best aspects of the other traditions. Ever since, I've heard about decline and what's causing it. Most of these complaints are about liberalism and institutional inefficiency.
Personally, I love a denomination that combines evangelical fervor with a social conscience. I love a denomination that wrestles with tough questions and is comfortable with grey areas. I love a denomination with organization and structure and accountability, one that provides a means for congregations to work together rather than build their own kingdoms and compete with each other. I love a denomination that values education but avoids bookishness or doctrinalism. I really love a tradition that has helping people and living the faith by serving others in its DNA.
My guess is that there are lots of people who would feel the same way in the greater culture. Not everybody. But a lot more would go for the UMC than the stripe of Christianity that more closely fits the cultural stereotype.
What is what we're offering isn't so bad? What if our biggest problem is that, for whatever reason, we just don't invite folks to come to church enough?
Even if it's based on goofy quantitative research of some sort or another, it does kinda feel like there must be some there there. It's very easy to find studies that suggest that most people who come to church come because a person other than a pastor invites them (most numbers for those studies are above 80%).
It makes me wonder. See, I sold knives through in-home demonstrations when I was in college. I certainly didn't think that everyone would buy. I knew, even when I was 19-years-old, that I would have to persevere through a certain number of rejections before someone would be interested in what I was selling.
I first came to the United Methodist Church to take a job, but I stayed and became a pastor because I believe the UMC is the best one and the denomination that combines the best aspects of the other traditions. Ever since, I've heard about decline and what's causing it. Most of these complaints are about liberalism and institutional inefficiency.
Personally, I love a denomination that combines evangelical fervor with a social conscience. I love a denomination that wrestles with tough questions and is comfortable with grey areas. I love a denomination with organization and structure and accountability, one that provides a means for congregations to work together rather than build their own kingdoms and compete with each other. I love a denomination that values education but avoids bookishness or doctrinalism. I really love a tradition that has helping people and living the faith by serving others in its DNA.
My guess is that there are lots of people who would feel the same way in the greater culture. Not everybody. But a lot more would go for the UMC than the stripe of Christianity that more closely fits the cultural stereotype.
What is what we're offering isn't so bad? What if our biggest problem is that, for whatever reason, we just don't invite folks to come to church enough?
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