May 26, 2010

Trapped in the 1960′s

By Jody+

I recently came across an article from the New York Times observing that our political debates often get sucked into the vortex of 1960′s politics.  Of course, what can be said of politics specifically is often true of the society generally.  In this case, I definitely believe it is true of the institutional Church:

It is your classic self-fulfilling prophecy: the more the ’60s generation dominates the political discourse, the less that discourse engages younger voters, and the longer the boomers hold sway over our politics.

{Read it all}

Has anyone else observed this phenomenon?

Posted in Christianity, General Notes, commentary, culture, reflections | Tagged , | 4 Comments
March 31, 2010

Linkage: Interesting reads from around the net

By Jody+

Below are just a few of the things I’ve been reading over the past few days.  Check them out:

Posted in Christianity, Life, hat tips | Tagged , , | 1 Comment
March 31, 2010

Repost: Washing our Hands in Blood

By Jody+

I originally wrote this post in April of 2007, in the aftermath of the shootings at Virginia Tech.  I recently came across a new post at Jesus Manifesto entitled “Jesus and Hitler atone for our sins,” that made me think of it, and I decided to repost.

I sit down to write this reflection on April 17, 2007, the day after the deadliest school shooting in American history. The initial inspiration for what I write here, however, is something much less heinous and now several years old.

Pilate washes his hands
Pilate washes his hands

When Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ came out, it generated a lot of conflict and debate for various reasons. For some it was anti-semitic, or poorly researched, a propaganda piece etc… But, in the midst of all this criticism, one in particular stood out to me: The antipathy of many people toward the way Gibson’s film portrayed Pontius Pilate. Some even argued that Gibson made Pilate into a hero. At first I found this criticism startling and wondered if somehow these people had seen a different version of the film than I had. It turns out it was just a different take on anthropology.

You see, while I saw in Pilate a weak and indecisive man who refused to take responsibility for his decisions, others were observing what they perceived to be a consummate politician doing what a politician should–his actions were even praise worthy. The root, it seemed, of people’s problems with Gibson’s portrayal of Pilate was not so much that he was portrayed in such a way as to make him look “good,” but rather, that he seems so like our own politicians. The problem with Pilate is that he is us, and the only portrayal that would have been sufficient would have been the one that made Pilate into a monster so grotesque that we could never see ourselves in his place.

John O’Sullivan addressed the issue of how people were responding to the portrayal of Pilate in the National Review. The core of his argument is what follows:

…there is also a less admirable reason why the modern world finds Pilate sympathetic. He is the patron saint of doubt and thus attractive to an age that regards doubt itself as a virtue — or at least as a mark of sophistication in the face of certainties with which we happen to disagree, whether they are the certainties of the religious right, or of fundamentalist Moslems, or of political ideologies. Many intellectuals, academics and (generally liberal) politicians have come to see doubt in these modestly heroic terms.

I think that O’Sullivan is certainly on to something, but I’m not sure it’s really the primary thing. I believe that many people were, on the deepest level, made uncomfortable with how easily the actions of a villain sit in the conscience. But rather than question the state of their conscience, they question the presentation of the villain. Surely Pilate must be heinously evil, and yet I can understand his actions, and I may even find them sympathetic–such a portrayal, especially in film, makes us uncomfortable and brings us face to face with our own duplicitous and sinful natures. As Hannah Arendt‘s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem (and much of the rest of her work) demonstrates, and contrary to way it is often portrayed in our movies and media, evil is not strictly alien or thrust upon us by some hideous outside force. Instead, evil is more often than not, banal and very clearly a part of us as human beings, a sick malfunction fueled by sin.

So what does all of this have to do with the VA Tech shooting? As Anna and I watched the news right after this tragedy occurred, we couldn’t help but talk about the words journalists were using to describe Cho Seung Hui, the man who perpetrated the killings. False emotion has always irritated me, and there was certainly plenty of that on display from some commentators. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about the people who were impacted by this, who were connected with the victims and their families, but rather commentators on national TV who could barely contain their falsified rage and seemed intent on completely dehumanizing the murderer through their use of language. Evil was used a lot–and this shooting was undeniably that–but that wasn’t the only term thrown about. Monster was another one we heard a lot, as was sick–but monster sticks in my mind. As I watched the news come out, and the commentary become more detailed, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t only watching the news about the aftermath of the actions of a very sick and indeed a very evil human being, but also the process of a society hardening itself against any intimation that each and every one of us is, in our heart of hearts, capable of doing something heinously evil.

As Arendt brings to light, Eichmann and most other Nazis were “ordinary men” before the rise of the Third Reich… Eichmann, for instance was a vacuum cleaner salesman. And yet, people want to create a mythology of monstrosity, put people who do horrible things in a separate category from “us,” not to punish them, but to soothe our consciences, and to help us continue to live the lie that “people are basically good.”

I realize that there are those who dislike Arendt’s characterization of evil as banal, just as many dislike Augustine’s understanding of it as a privation of the good. But in my limited experience, this is the only understanding of evil, and of humanity, that allows us to both judge evil in others and guard for it in ourselves. To do otherwise, and to accept the easy cultural assumption that anyone who does an evil thing must not be “like us” is really to do the same thing Pilate did, to wash our hands of all responsibility… if we attempt this, we may find that we’re only washing our hands in blood.

Posted in Christianity, commentary | 1 Comment
March 28, 2010

The Message of Palm Sunday: The Sunday of the Passion

By Jody+
The Triumphal Entry
The Triumphal Entry by Pietro Lorenzetti

It strikes me every year that the liturgists who authored the Prayer Book Liturgy for Palm Sunday wanted to discourage long sermons.  More than any other service, the message is communicated at the level of the gut, viscerally.  Very little interpretation or explanation is required beyond simple participation in the service.  A service which leaves us, intentionally, at a moment of great despair, there to linger for a week reflecting on our role in the events that transpired.

And I don’t simply mean our role in the liturgy, obviously, but our role in the events that the liturgy and the readings recount.  In the Liturgy of the Palms, we stand with those who welcomed Jesus‘ entry into Jerusalem with loud “Hosannas” and cheers and rejoicing.  Standing with them, crying out with them, we’re reminded what it feels like to finally have that log awaited desire fulfilled.  To see our most hoped for reality come to pass.  The Messiah has come!  The King who will restore the land to its rightful people.  The one who will settle accounts, restore good fortune, put to right injustices and bring people into line with the sword.  Hosanna! we cry, connecting with the joy they felt, believing that the day of the Lord they had always envisioned was coming to pass, that the Kingdom they assumed God would establish was being called into being.  Finally.  after all these years.  It’s time to celebrate.  To lay palm fronds at the feet of the one who comes, of the Messiah we’ve been waiting for.

But then, something happens, and the Liturgy forces us to confront a sad reality about the great throngs that greeted Jesus at the gates of Jerusalem, and about the great throngs of people who have lived and died on this earth in all the years since.  We transition, with the crowd, from shouts of praise and Hossana, to the Passion Gospel where we cry out “Crucify him!”  We learn, through participation, that the people who cheered so mightily at Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, cheered just as mightily for his crucifixion when they realized that this was not the Messiah that they wanted or expected.  This Jesus.  He was not the Messiah that they expected and this kingdom he announced… it was not a kingdom they wanted any part of.  And so they turned on him to protect what little they had, to guard the things they loved, the things they loved which they thought were dedicated to God, but for which they would crucify God.

And we’re there with them.

We’re put there with them by the liturgy, because we’re there with them in spirit so often in our day to day lives.  Today and throughout Holy Week we’re called to examine our relationship with God.  To examine what exactly it is we’re hoping for, why exactly it is we claim to follow this carpenter from Nazareth.  We’re called to seek within ourselves any evidence that we have, like the crowd, decided to shout “Hosanna,” because we have created a Messiah, a God, in our own image, because we have looked forward to the establishment of a kingdom governed by a law of our making.

We’re called to look with fresh eyes at Jesus and the message of his Gospel, and decide again whether it is a message we can handle, whether we’re willing to continue the hard work of changing our expectations and casting off our selfishness and prejudices in order to truly welcome the Kingdom that even now is coming more and more into reality.

We’re here today, as well, to be reminded of the times when we have said “Crucify him,” by our actions.  To be reminded of the times we have rejected the truth and message of the Gospel by rejecting what it means for us and for all people.  We may never have gone so far as to consciously reject or renounce Christ.  We may never have participated in a “de-baptism” ritual, such as have become popular among atheists in England these days.  Be that as it may, I would go so far as to say that all of us have at some point done something so out of conformity with what Jesus would have us do that we might as well have shouted those words while he stood in front of that crowd.

Our service today invites us to remember that, at least as much as any of the actions of those actually present in Jerusalem at that time, our sin, our need for redemption, placed Jesus on the cross.

In the words of the old Lutheran Hymn:

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon Thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone Thee.
’Twas I, Lord, Jesus, I it was denied Thee!
I crucified Thee

Or as a priest friend of mine put it in one of his sermons:

We may well ask ourselves which role we play in this human drama. Do we test God, Jesus, the Spirit in terms of “What is in it for me?” The crowd did. Do we resent the way the Faith accuses us and wish we could silence Jesus, as Judas hoped? Do we run from Jesus and hide behind self-preservation? How ironic it is that the religious leaders and most of the disciples acted from self-interest. The Chief Priests convinced themselves that an unholy murder was justified to safeguard the institution. The disciples perhaps convinced themselves that if the work was to continue, they should protect themselves from arrest and punishment.

Over and over again in the long story of the church, Christian people have acted the roles we encounter today, not just on Palm Sunday… (Fr. Tony Clavier)

The reality is that as humans we are all of us, mixed bags.  Traditional Christian Theology has explained this by juxtaposing the reality that we are all made in the image and likeness of God, with the idea of Original Sin, which, though it can been articulated in different ways, basically means that, if God were to become incarnate today, if Jesus were to return, people today would react the same way they did over two thousand years ago.  The great philosopher Aristotle famously said that humanity “when perfected is the best of animals; but if [...] isolated from law and justice [...] worst of all.”

What Aristotle believed could only come by law and justice, as Christians, we know can come only through Grace.  Living well means saying yes to grace.

Rowan Williams makes the observation in his book Tokens of Trust:

“Only three human individuals are mentioned in the Creed, Jesus, Mary and Pontius Pilate: that is, Jesus; the one who says ‘yes’ to him; and the one who says ‘no’ to him. You could say that those three names map out the territory in which we all live. Through our lives, we swing towards one pole or the other, towards a deeper ‘yes’ or towards a deeper ‘no’. And in the middle of it all stands the one who makes sense of it all. Jesus—the one into whose life we must all try to grow, who can work with our ‘yes’ and can even overcome our ‘no’.” (p 76)

Palm Sunday with it’s liturgy is here to remind us that we all move back and forth on that continuum, that we all say no and we all say yes.  The challenge of the Christian life is to say the yes more and more and the no less and less.

Entombment of Christ by Fra Angelico

As Williams puts it in his book Resurrection: interpreting the Easter Gospel:

The condemning court, the murderous ‘city’, [i.e. Jerusalem, or more generally the world as opposed to God's will] is indeed judged as resisting the saving will of God; but that does not mean that the will of God ceases to be saving. The rulers and the people are in rebellion; yet they act ‘in ignorance’ (Acts 3:17 [show] "And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. (ESV)
This text is from the ESV Bible. Visit www.esv.org to learn about the ESV.; cf. Luke 23:34 [show] And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." And they cast lots to divide his garments. (ESV)
This text is from the ESV Bible. Visit www.esv.org to learn about the ESV.), and God still waits to be graciously present in ‘times of refreshing’ (Acts 3:19 [show] Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, (ESV)
This text is from the ESV Bible. Visit www.esv.org to learn about the ESV.). And grace is released when the judges turn to their victim and recognize him as their hope and their savior.” (p3)

If we are looking for hope in today’s bleak retelling of the Passion and death of Christ, it is that when we recognize our complicity in evil, we do not have to stay there.  We are not finally condemned.  Just because we may find ourselves resisting the saving will of God, that does not mean it is not saving.  And that is good news to hang onto as we mark the way of the cross this Holy Week.

Books referenced:

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March 22, 2010

Throwing Jesus off a Cliff

By Jody+
Trying to throw Jesus off a cliff

Luke 4:21-30 [show] And he began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, "Is not this Joseph's son?" And he said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Physician, heal yourself.' What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well." And he said, "Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian." When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away. (ESV)
This text is from the ESV Bible. Visit www.esv.org to learn about the ESV. provides us with a glimpse of the ramifications of Jesus’ homecoming to Nazareth.  It all begins rather well earlier in the chapter, when Jesus–being filled with the Holy Spirit after his temptations in the wilderness–returns to Galilee and to his hometown of Nazareth.  Once there he goes to the Synagogue on the Sabbath day (which, as Luke reminds us, was his custom).  While there he exercises the right of every Jewish man to take part in the reading and interpretation of scripture (as an aside, the account given here of Synagogue worship is among the earliest accounts we have).  He reads the following passage from Isaiah, saying:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

In his essay “Salvation even in Sin: Learning to speak Truthfully about Ourselves,” Stanley Hauerwas makes in interesting observation under the heading “The Trouble with Sin:”

Just as Milton struggled not to let the devil become the hero of Paradise Lost, so any theologian who takes up the subject of sin must wrestle with the temptation of making sin more interesting than God. This is particularly a problem in our time, given the widespread habit of using the word ‘God’ as a generalized concept to name all that which remains inexplicable.  Not surprisingly, in such a time many people are often more ready to believe themselves sinners than creatures of a gracious God.  At least they are more ready to believe they are sinners than they are to believe in a God who not only is the beginning and the end of all that is but who has refused to abandon us to our sins. (61)

In the return of Christ to Nazareth where he had grown up, we see an example of what it can mean for God to get specific.  In terms of his identity, Jesus is the incarnation of the Word, the second person of the Trinity and thereby conveys the character of God (2 Corinthians 4:6 [show] For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (ESV)
This text is from the ESV Bible. Visit www.esv.org to learn about the ESV.).  One of the things that Jesus does continually throughout his ministry is to challenge those who believe themselves to be faithful, calling them to examine the content of their faith and make an honest assessment of whether they have truly been following the spirit of the law as well as the letter.  The challenge presented by the character of God revealed in Christ is a bit more than a critique of the pious loosing their way, it is a challenge to one of the fundamental ideas that many of Jesus’ listeners had held onto their whole lives, i.e. the idea that God’s grace and mercy is extended first and primarily–if not solely–to the people of Israel, and specifically, for some folks, only the religiously fastidious among the people of Israel.  In this situation in Nazareth, the people are appreciative of Jesus’ interpretation of the text from Isaiah, until he gets to the point of revealing two separate but related points.  First, He is going to do no miracles in Nazareth, his home town, because he does not expect that they would be received by the people there, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown” (Luke 4:23 [show] And he said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Physician, heal yourself.' What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well." (ESV)
This text is from the ESV Bible. Visit www.esv.org to learn about the ESV.).  Secondly, expanding from the particular to the more general, he emphasizes the times in Israel’s history when the grace of God has been extended beyond the bounds of the people of Israel, even as some among the chosen people suffered.  It is at this point that the people become angry, run him out of town and decide to throw him off the cliff.  The people aren’t so much angered by any implication that they are sinners (though there are plenty of occasions in the Gospels when that becomes a sticking point), as they are angered by the idea that the grace of God might be active outside the boundaries they recognize or impose.

So how does this relate to the tendency Hauerwas points out?  The people of Nazareth may have been prepared to hear of their failures and sins–the ways in which they could have been more faithful in keeping the Law–but what they were fundamentally not prepared for was to be challenged in their perception of God’s grace and care.  They were angered not only because Jesus illustrated his point by talking about people from the history of Israel who had not been healed or saved from their circumstances, but because of the fact that foreigners sometimes experienced God’s aid when Israel did not–it was a challenge not simply because of the seeming randomness of divine intervention, but because God’s grace was not as limited as they believed it to be.  In the end it was not a pronouncement of judgment, but a pronouncement of grace that caused the people to want to throw Jesus off a cliff.  This is often still the case.

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March 10, 2010

Fighting Pedantry with Pedantry

By Jody+

Everyone has their own pet peeves.  I know I do.  The most interesting exchanges often occur when we find that our pet peeves clash with someone else’s–drama and hilarity (at least from the outside) often ensues.

One of my pet peeves are folks who take it upon themselves to restrict the use of language in a particular way, or who push for standardization in English by saying something is “wrong” or “incorrect,” when their judgment is actually quite subjective–as most are.  I recently had this button of mine pushed at a conference regarding evangelism.  During the introductory presentation the speaker made the comment that “I hope none of you are using the term ‘recessional,’ given the state of the economy, we have enough recession (funny enough)…” then he went on to say “seriously, unless you’re walking backwards, I hope none of you use it, because that’s what you would have to do to use the word correctly…”

Similarly, I had a classmate in seminary critique a bulletin of mine because I used the word “recessional.”  “We never recess in the church, because we never go backward, we only process, where ever we go because we’re going forward…”  I admit, that this struck me a bit like the only “advance to the rear” joke.  To both examples of pedantry, I add my own, backed up by the Oxford English Dictionary (which my wife claims is my mistress…):

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March 9, 2010

Random thoughts on a Tuesday

By Jody+
I’ve just gotten back to Hendersonville from a “Fresh Start” meeting down at St. George’s and am now awaiting the arrival of a parishioner at a local coffee spot.  I haven’t written much for the blog recently, but I have come across several articles that readers might be interested in.  Enjoy:
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February 8, 2010

Sermon for the 5th Sunday After Epiphany: Never fear, none of us are good enough

By Jody+
Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8 [show] In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!" And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for." And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Then I said, "Here am I! Send me." (ESV)
This text is from the ESV Bible. Visit www.esv.org to learn about the ESV., (9-13) ;  Psalm 138 [show] I give you thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise; I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word. On the day I called, you answered me; my strength of soul you increased. All the kings of the earth shall give you thanks, O LORD, for they have heard the words of your mouth, and they shall sing of the ways of the LORD, for great is the glory of the LORD. For though the LORD is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hand against the wrath of my enemies, and your right hand delivers me. The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.
This text is from the ESV Bible. Visit www.esv.org to learn about the ESV. ; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 [show] Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. (ESV)
This text is from the ESV Bible. Visit www.esv.org to learn about the ESV. ; Luke 5:1-11 [show] On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch." And Simon answered, "Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets." And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men." And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him. (ESV)
This text is from the ESV Bible. Visit www.esv.org to learn about the ESV.
The Call of Isaiah

I’ve read and I’m told that the Church is in trouble.

According to George Barna, 3500 to 4000 churches close their doors each year in America.  Some agencies put the number at more like 7,000.

As one church planter put it:

“I foresee a quickening of churches dying in America over the next twenty years.  There are tens of thousands of churches filled with communities that have shrunk below 100, 70, 50 and are filled with an aging population.  Many of these churches will not know how to survive.” (Drew Goodmanson)

I’m told the Church is in trouble.

Only 15% of churches in the United States are growing and just 2.2% of those are growing by conversion growth.  In other words, many others are playing a shell game with the already-Christian, as they move from one congregation to another.

I’m told the Church is in trouble.

According to some estimates churches lose over 2.5 million people each year to “nominalism and secularism,” the majority of whom may never set foot in a church community again.  Perhaps you know some folks in this category, or perhaps you were in the category for a while.

Specifically, in the Episcopal Church, according to Dr. Kirk Hadaway (program officer for congregational research) in the most recent state of the Church report to General Convention: “The age structure of The Episcopal Church suggests an average of forty thousand deaths and twenty-one thousand births, or a natural decline of 19,000 members per year,” a population larger than most dioceses. The advanced—and still advancing—age of our membership, combined with our low birth rate, means that we lose the equivalent of one diocese per year.”  This is, of course, assuming that most of those 21 thousand babies grow up and continue to practice their faith in the Episcopal Church or elsewhere–a rosy expectation that experience has proven to be false in most cases. (click here to download the State of the Church Report as a PDF)

I’m told the Church is in trouble.

Our experience in the Episcopal Church is not unique.  The Southern Baptist Church–which, along with the Roman Catholic often acts as a bit of a foil in conversations amongst Episcopalians–The Southern Baptist Church has the highest proportion of members over the age of 70 years old of any denomination.

In 2008, their outgoing president Frank Page, warned that, should current trends continue as many as half of all Southern Baptist Churches could close by 2030.

And if the Church is in trouble, you might expect evidence to be visible among leaders.  Unfortunately it is.

According to Ashland Theological Seminary and the North American Missions board (also found on this blog):

  • Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
  • Fifty percent of pastors’ marriages will end in divorce.  Anecdotally at least, the number seems higher for second career clergy.
  • Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
  • 90% say their Seminary Training did not prepare them for what they face day-to-day in the congregation.
  • Eighty percent of seminary graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry after their first position and within the first five years.
  • Only 10% reach age 65 as a pastor.
  • Almost forty percent polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry.
  • Seventy percent said the only time they spend studying the Word is when they are preparing their sermons.

Pastors’ Wives/spouses:

  • Eighty percent of pastors’ spouses wish their spouse would choose another profession.
  • The majority of pastor’s wives surveyed said that the most destructive event that has occurred in their marriage and family was the day they entered the ministry.

I’ve heard the Church is in trouble, and looking at these realities would seem to confirm it.

It would be tempting, even for me as a clergy person, to look at the evidence and say that it demonstrates dysfunctional and inept pastors or troubled congregations.

But the thing is, I think that the majority of people in those congregations that end up closing, and the majority of those pastors who ended up throwing in the towel on their ordained ministry are faithful people who had their hearts in the right place.

And maybe that’s an even scarier prospect.

There’s no easy scape goat.

But the fact of the matter is that there aren’t any qualified leaders in the Christian community–not the way we’ve been conditioned to think about it.

None of those pastors were “good enough” to be pastors.

Perhaps some of them made the mistake of believing that they were.

Our first reading this morning has something to say about that.  I’m thankful that it is a reading that I’ve heard at every ordination service I’ve been to.

In it, we hear the account of Isaiah’s call to be a prophet.

The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.  And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

Consider Isaiah’s reaction to God’s presence.  He does not pretend to be worthy.  He does not presume to stand before God as a holy person, prepared for whatever task.

“I am lost,” he says, “for I am a man of unclean lips…”

One of my friends, quite an evangelical, explained his decision to prostrate or lay face down at his ordination service, something usually more associated with the Anglo-Catholic wing of Episcopalians/Anglicans.  Looking at Isaiah as an example, he said “when God’s in the house, you hit the deck.”

This is the proper response of humanity to holiness.

So no one is fit to be a pastor or priest without divine intervention.

And I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, and it may come as a shock–but none of you are fit to be Christians without Jesus Christ.

Consider the way Isaiah’s story unfolds:

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February 3, 2010

Anglican theological distinctiveness

By Jody+

In the recent essay I wrote for The Living Church, “Reviving the quadrilateral” (which interested readers can find here), I made the following remark without explaining it in detail: “Whether one looks to Jewel’s Apology, Hooker’s Laws, or the works of the Caroline Divines, there is clearly an Anglican identity, expressed more clearly in the manner and tenor of interpretation and in the particular sources of authority than through specific doctrines.” I did not really feel the need to defend the statement since I believe it is a widely held understanding, at least among some Anglicans.  I know that I’ve read similar statements in the works of Rowan Williams and Michael Ramsey.  This evening however, I read a very good summary of the idea from Henry R. McAdoo’s Spirit of Anglicanism: A Survey of Anglican Theological Method in the Seventeenth Century (not to be confused with the similarly titled book by Michael Ramsey, Anglican Spirit).

After reading the first chapter of McAdoo’s book, I thought I’d share some of it with you:

The term theological method needs some comment.  There is a distinctively Anglican theological ethos, and the distinctiveness lies in method rather than in content, for Anglicanism, as Chillingworth put it, has declined to call any man master in theology.  There is no specifically Anglican corpus of doctrine and no king-pin in Anglican theology such as Calvin, nor is there any tendency to stress specific doctrines such as predestination, or specific philosophies such as Thomism or nominalism or any other one of the several medieval brands of philosophy.

Richard Montague’s assertion that he was neither a Calvinist nor a Lutheran but a Christian, illustrate the point that Anglicanism is not committed to believing anything because it is Anglican but only because it is true.  Perhaps the most important thing about Hooker is that he wrote no Summa and composed no Institutes, for what he did was to outline method.  What is distinctively Anglican is then not a theology but a theological method. (p. 1)

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February 1, 2010

A scathing critique of a tendency of mainline denominations

By Jody+

Thanks to Ben Myers over at Faith & Theology Blog for posting this.  It’s from Australia, but is applicable to the mainline denominations throughout the English Speaking world.  The frustrating thing is, I think most folks in our culture live with a view of Christianity formed by a fundamentalism-not fundamentalism polarity.

Ruins of Laodicea engraving by William Miller after T Allom

Ruins of Laodicea

What I mean by that is something exhibited  by Richard Dawkins’ defense of Pat Robertson as a “true Christian.”  The campaign of the new atheism depends largely on the widespread belief that all religious folks are fundamentalist and all religions dangerous by nature.  I would say that many Christians have tacitly accepted this narrative as well, and, if they are not fundamentalists express their faith largely as “we’re not that.”  It’s just this sort of attitude, coupled with a natural desire to preserve institutions and the natural resistance of structures to change  that have wrought much of the decline within mainline denominations.  (That, and the fact, as Peter Berger has pointed out, the mainline “won” culturally speaking and the values that defined the mainline protestant churches have pretty much been universalized in our culture while being detached from their roots.  For many folk, there’s no reason to go to church only to have what one already thinks affirmed.)

The lowest common denomination: a lament

by Scott Stephens (Scott is a pastor and theological educator in the Uniting Church in Australia, one of the country’s largest mainline denominations. In this piece, Scott discusses the Church’s founding confessional document, the Basis of Union. A shorter version of this piece was published in the denominational magazine, Journey.)

Over thirty years ago, the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) embarked on what could have been a remarkable journey, but it deviated from its original course with devastating consequences. It is now a shell of its former self, like so much Liberal Protestantism throughout the West, having gone whoring after the strange gods of impotent theology, liturgical gimmickry, inert bureaucracy and social respectability.

The past decade in particular has seen the UCA relinquish any prophetic vocation it might once have had — along with a considerable portion of its ecclesial and evangelistic vitality — and instead assume the inoffensive role of the religious division of a non-government provider of community and health services.

And so, in an extraordinary apostasy from its original calling, the UCA has decided to represent the ‘middle way’, the path of least resistance, a facile alternative to fundamentalism, evangelicalism and pentecostalism. In short, it has become the lowest common denomination. It doesn’t take much effort to imagine that, if God sees fit to grant it another thirty years, all that will be left of the Uniting Church itself is the logo on hospitals and Blue Care letterhead — and that for purely historical reasons.

But perhaps most troubling is that the fledgling church was warned against this very apostasy by Davis McCaughey, inaugural President of the Uniting Church. In his incendiary address to the 1979 Assembly of the UCA, McCaughey expressed his fear that the Church would be hijacked by bureaucrats and pedants, and that its clergy would be reduced to careerists and panderers:

“We no longer seem to expect our ministers to spend hours (literally hours) every week, thinking, reading, praying: so that when the hungry sheep look up they may be fed…. And I am not wholly convinced that our Constitution, Regulations and Procedures are sufficiently and rigorously controlled by [our eschatological hope]. I am not persuaded that they are not in danger … of becoming ends in themselves.”

He warned just as passionately against the tendency he perceived to adopt a form of incestuous Church patriotism, which would obscure and ultimately destroy the Church’s vocation to carry on the mission of Christ:

“At all events the cry for a sense of identity in the Uniting Church cannot be answered by the offer of a new kind of Church patriotism. In an important sense, we in the Uniting Church in Australia have no identity, no distinctive marks — other than belonging with the people of God brought into being by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ on their way to the consummation of all things in him.… We have embarked on a course in which we ask men and women to forget who they are, and chiefly to remember whose they are.”

{Read it all}

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